Local councils may be left unable to take climate change into account when setting long-term development objectives under New Zealand’s new planning and environmental framework, an advocacy group warns.

The Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill are set to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA) and redefine how New Zealand governs its land: what is built, where, and how. 

Without climate-related goals or policy direction in these new bills, “it is uncertain whether it is even permissible for effects on the climate to be considered in planning and decision-making, particularly the climate effects of land use,” wrote Forest and Bird in its submission.

While increasingly severe climate disruptions manifest as farm-flooding rains and coastal erosion, both bills frame climate change as something to be responded to after the fact, rather than mitigated by early decisions at the planning table. Local councils and environmental groups say they want that to change.

In its submission, Auckland Council noted neither bill contained explicit reference to the effects of climate change. Where climate change was mentioned, the council said the language surrounding it was of adaptation, not mitigation.

The council called for greater emphasis on efforts that would encourage long-term solutions, and warned that focusing on adaptation could leave emissions-reducing land-use changes and other solutions “out of scope” when councils around the country had to design their new long-term plans.

These concerns were echoed by the Greater Wellington Regional Council, which said climate change was “notably absent” from the goals of the legislation. 

The council called for climate change to be foundational, not peripheral to the new system. It also recommended the RMA’s definition of climate change be incorporated into the new planning system’s hazards framework to maintain consistency.

How the RMA defines climate change

“A change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and that is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods”

Without an explicit goal of mitigating the effects of climate change, local authorities could find it difficult to justify proactive – and potentially controversial – decisions like managed retreat, flood risk avoidance and land-use change, the regional council said.

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council called for an amendment to the new hazards planning framework that would make climate change mitigation and adaptation a “primary driver” of all decision-making under the act.

“Without a clear, proactive goal, there is a risk the system may stay focused on responding after events, rather than driving the major shift needed to build long-term regional resilience,” it wrote.

Nelson City Council brought a different perspective with a similar conclusion. Because of its constrained size, the climate change policies and emissions rates from its area were not like those of an agricultural region.

The council’s submission homed in on regional spatial plans: a new standardisation approach sought by the reforms. These plans were designed to be compiled by councils nationwide under the new system, to chart out long-term development goals in line with new policy objectives (though not all of these objectives have been finalised).

Schedule 2 of the Planning Bill set out the process for how to design these, including mandatory issues that a council had to identify, provide for, and have regard to. But nowhere in this process did it consider greenhouse gas emissions (’emissions’ were mentioned nine times in the planning bill, but only ever in reference to noise).

This was a departure from the current national policy statement on urban development, which included a policy mandating that planning decisions, as a minimum, “support reductions in greenhouse gas emissions”.

Unlike agrarian areas, 61 percent of Nelson City Council’s emissions come from transport. If the council sought to reduce its emissions (which it does, by 60 percent), the council said spatial planning under the new regime was a key tool.

The new spatial plan could be an opportunity to reduce these emissions by changing road use. But without a mandate to consider this a priority, the council warned it might not be able to fully justify investing in cycleways, public transport or more compact urban development.

Taranaki Regional Council did not think the new regional plans should lead emissions reduction efforts, a responsibility it said belonged with the Emissions Trading Scheme and national Emissions Reduction Plan. 

Instead, the new bills ought to “enable emissions reduction opportunities through their provisions”. 

This meant including a line in Schedule 2 of the Planning Bill that required the special plan committee to have regard to the Net Zero 2050 target, emissions budgets and emissions reduction plan under the Climate Change Response Act 2002.

Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop told Newsroom climate adaptation was addressed in the bills via goals related to natural hazards, while mitigation was best dealt with elsewhere.

National instruments under the bills would specify processes and methodologies for assessing and managing natural hazard risk, which included those exacerbated by a changing climate.

“Regional spatial plans will also need to consider natural hazards and identify priority areas where adaptation plans should be developed,” said Bishop.

But this was still the ‘adaptation’ approach councils had wanted to move away from. When it came to mitigation, Bishop said the new planning system was not intended to manage effects that are already, or are better, managed under other statutes – such as the Climate Change Response Act.

According to Forest and Bird, the expert advisory group’s report on the bills agreed the Emissions Trading Scheme held responsibility, but outlined how much greenhouse gas emissions overlapped with land use changes. 

The advisory group cited advice from the Climate Change Commission suggesting more policies were needed to support emissions pricing as a climate mitigation measure. 

Without climate-related goals or policy direction, “it is uncertain whether it is even permissible for effects on the climate to be considered in planning and decision-making, particularly the climate effects of land use,” wrote Forest and Bird in its submission.