Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern committed to creating a carbon-neutral government by 2025 and declared a climate emergency in New Zealand.
On December 2, parliamentarians voted on the declaration, adopting it with 76 votes to 43.
Ardern, who started her second term last month, pointed out that the country must act quickly as the climate crisis poses ‘one of the greatest challenges of our time’.
“When we make statements, it is often that there is a threat to life, a threat to the property, and emergencies concerning civil security,” Ardern said. “If we do not respond to climate change, we will continue to experience these emergencies on our shores.”
“Vote for this statement, stand on the right side of history, be part of the solution we must collectively deliver to the next generation.”
While the declaration itself is greatly symbolic, Ardern stressed the need to take action.
The prime minister announced the government would ‘demonstrate what is possible to other sectors of the economy by reducing the government’s own emissions and becoming a carbon-neutral government by 2025’.
“We must get our own house in order. How can we stand and take a leadership position among the private sector unless we take the same action that we expect of them,” Ardern explained.
Ardern backed her declaration by stating that the science on climate change is clear, saying that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has determined that in order to avoid a ‘disastrous’ global temperature rise of 1.5°C, nations must act with ‘urgency’.
Moreover, the prime minister said that New Zealand had to acknowledge the threat, however, the move was rejected by the country’s center-right opposition National Party, France 24 reports.
“It can do harm in making people think that by declaring an emergency something has happened when it hasn’t,” National Party leader Judith Collins said. “It’s quite false and misleading.”
While Collins claims the emergency has not happened, Ardern described the declaration as an ‘acknowledgment of the next generation’, adding that it is an ‘acknowledgment of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and if we do not take action now’.
New Zealand is one of 33 nations that have acknowledged the global crisis by declaring a climate emergency after the UK government became the first on May 1, 2019.
Last year, Ardern committed the country to become carbon neutral by 2050 and to generate all of its energy from renewable sources by 2035.