95bFM The government's climate policy taken to court
27 March, 2026
Interview by Theo Hayden, adapted by Marlo Schorr-Kon
Lawyers for Climate Action New Zealand took Climate Change Minister Simon Watts to Wellington's High Court last week. They say the government has not adequately consulted before dismantling dozens of climate policies. Also under scrutiny is the government's over reliance on offsetting climate emissions through planting pine trees.
Similar court cases have pressured governments abroad like those of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to revisit their own climate change policies.
Associate Professor of Law and Chair of the upcoming Climate Litigation Conference, Associate Professor Vernon Rive, told 95bFM's The Wire that there has been a “significant increase in people going to the courts to try and influence the direction of climate change policy all around the world, and New Zealand is no exception here.”
Rive says many of the strategies that litigants are using involve “asking the courts for clarification or enforcement of newer, specific climate change laws."
“In New Zealand, we have the Climate Change Response Act 2002 that was amended by the Zero Carbon Amendment Act in 2019, and in other countries, there are also targeted specific climate acts. The UK, for example, has a statutory framework, which is similar to New Zealand's.
“So judges all around the world are looking at what their fellow judges are doing. And there has been quite heavy reliance, I think, on UK case law in New Zealand climate litigation, including the case which is currently before the High Court in Wellington.”
Rive says the case is not “radically unusual” in that it is “another example of litigants asking the courts to enforce legal obligations under a piece of legislation.” However, he says New Zealand’s case has some key differences from those seen abroad.
“One of those features is the aspect of the claim where Lawyers for Climate Action and the Environmental Law Initiative are asking the courts to assess whether the New Zealand government's heavy reliance on tree planting fits with its domestic legal obligations as well as its international legal obligations.”
Environmental groups say that it's far preferable for emission reductions to be achieved by stopping emissions at the source.
Rive says one way to do this is by shifting our reliance from fossil fuels onto more renewable energy sources. He says this is “especially helpful in New Zealand because we have such a high level of renewable electricity generation.”
“Getting people off petrol and diesel cars into electrics, better for large industries to be reducing their reliance on coal and on oil are all better ways of addressing this climate crisis than heavy reliance on, in New Zealand, monocultural pine plantations, which are part of the solution.”
Rive says there is not much stopping the government from passing legislation that changes the legality of its actions.
“We have a constitutional system in New Zealand, which gives great power to Parliament, and we don't have any overriding constitution, which would limit the ability of Parliament to be passing legislation.”
“Let's not leave this problem for future generations. Let's start dealing with it now.”
