Climate change now hitting
Climate change may have already had an irreversible impact on New Zealand’s natural systems and the effects are likely to worsen, a new Government report says.
Data showed conclusively that temperatures had already risen by 1 degree Celsius in New Zealand since 1906, which would have an impact on the economy, extreme weather events, biodiversity and health.
The Our Climate and Atmosphere report, released by the Ministry for the Environment (MfE) and Statistics New Zealand yesterday, revealed glaciers had lost nearly a quarter of their ice since 1977, and sea levels had risen between 14 centimetres and 22cm at four main ports since 1916.
Meanwhile, our contribution to global greenhouse emissions had increased and sea level and temperature rises were forecast to gain momentum.
Soils in some areas had become drier and ocean acidity and temperatures had risen.
Last year was the country’s warmest since records began and the five warmest years on record had occurred in the last 20 years.
The number of extreme weather events had increased, as had the insurance cost.
New Zealand had the fifthhighest emission levels per person in the OECD, the report said.
Since 1990, gross emissions increased 24 per cent, while net emissions increased 64 per cent. Net emissions accounted for carbon stored in forests, which was released when they were cut down.
Our high rate of emissions was attributed to an unusually large share of agriculture emissions and high car-ownership rates.
‘‘While New Zealand is not a large contributor of emissions globally, we are certainly affected locally and we need to act on what that means for us,’’ secretary for the environment Vicky Robertson said.
The scope of the report did not include recommendations for tackling emissions and Robertson said the purpose was to open the conversation.
‘‘We are working quite significantly to bring together all the public services towards advising collectively and consistently around what government could do to create a pathway to our 2030 targets.’’
Current targets were to reduce greenhouse emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The document singles out transport as a key driver of increased emissions, which had jumped 78 per cent since 1990 and now equated to 18 per cent overall.
However, agriculture emissions sat far higher, constituting just under half of overall emissions and had also climbed significantly in the same period.
Robertson said the report had not sought to downplay agriculture’s impact and she would not be shying away from it in policy advice.
While New Zealand’s emissions had continued to climb, Britain reduced its emissions by 26 per cent from 1990 to 2013, Sweden by 25 per cent, and France by 11 per cent.
Robertson refused to give New Zealand a scorecard on its performance, but said now was the time to make changes.
‘‘The future impacts of climate change on our lives all depend on how fast global emissions are reduced and the extent to which our communities can adapt to change.’’
University of Otago environmental epidemiologist Simon Hales said the main takeaway was that the country was not living up to its international obligations on climate change.
‘‘We require a much better, more quantitative understanding of the likely adverse impacts of climate change on human health than the brief, vague statements in the MfE report.’’
Climate change would likely have an impact on our already struggling biodiversity.
Research showed there was already a growing imbalance in the gender split of tuatara.
Warmer temperatures also increased the wasp population in beech forests, which resulted in less food for native species, and the frequency of masts (tree seed dropping), creating food for rodents, which attract predators.