Tāmaki Makaurau – New Zealanders are increasingly concerned about the impact of climate change, but fewer believe that the government has a clear plan in place to tackle it, according to a new study.
Significantly more New Zealanders are concerned about the impacts of climate change that are already being seen around the country (80 percent, up from 76 percent in 2022), while 82 percent of New Zealanders are also concerned about the impacts of climate change that are already being seen in other countries around the world.
The Ipsos global advisor study regularly asks respondents from around the world, including New Zealand, for their views on different topics. Ipsos has conducted this study to understand perceptions around key environmental issues facing different countries, willingness to make personal changes to combat climate change and expectations from the government.
The research explored people’s perceptions of different climate change action and their effectiveness in reducing emissions. More than 20,000 people across 29 countries were surveyed. In New Zealand, 1003 people aged 18 plus participated in this survey.
What New Zealand had for a moment was political leadership. It lasted from 2018 to 2022. It created the sense that there was a plan and a willingness to act. The business community was getting on board, households were seeing government and business engaging.
Then the agricultural sector went political, political consensus abated, government decisions over admitting exotics into the permanent forestry category in the ETS, reducing fossil energy costs by walking away from $1.2 billion of taxes on fuel, cancelling the bio fuels mandate, making the high price low volume decision on ETS settings, acquiescing to a no impact pricing regime for agriculutral emissions, has resulted in a loss of momentum.
The opportunity for a just transition is slipping away. Get ready for a rough ride. Aotearoa’s agricultural sector is going to be decimated by climate change. When the world panics about warming, methane emitted by those who pollute for profit to create goods and services for the affluent will be seen as low hanging fruit.
Controlled growing environments, concern over security of food supply, GE, renewable energy and alternative proteins pose an enormous threat to ruminant, pastoral livestock production of meat and milk protein.
Compared to others around the world, significantly more New Zealanders recognise that individuals, businesses and the government need to act now:
- 66 percent stated that if the government does not act now to combat climate change, it will be failing the people of New Zealand (compared to a global average of 61 percent)
- 65 percent stated that if businesses do not act now, they will be failing their employees and customers (59 percent global average)
- 67 percent stated that if individuals like me do not act now, we will be failing future generations (63 percent global average)
Notably, however, significantly fewer New Zealanders believe that the government has a clear plan in place for how government, businesses and people are going to work together to tackle climate change compared to last year (31 percent, down from 46 percent in 2022). Globally, awareness of governments’ climate change action plan also sits at 31 percent (down from 39 percent in 2022).
Compared to others around the world, New Zealanders are less likely to express agnostic views about climate change.
Only 18 percent of New Zealanders think that the negative impact of climate change is too far off in the future to worry about (23 percent global average), 19 percent believe that climate change is beyond our control and that it’s too late to do anything about it (24 percent global average).
Seeing the impacts of climate-driven weather events (51 percent), receiving financial incentives (51 percent) and having easily accessible information on how to act daily (49 percent) are the top drivers that encourage New Zealanders to personally respond to climate change.
Like the rest of the world, New Zealanders tend to perceive many actions as having a far greater impact on reducing emissions than they actually do. Recycling and growing/producing your own food continue to be incorrectly identified by New Zealanders as being among the top three most impactful carbon-reducing actions (the true rank for reducing emissions has recycling in 60th place and growing/producing your own food in 23rd place). New Zealanders are also significantly less likely to correctly identify switching to purchasing renewable electricity as an impactful carbon-reducing actions.
