New Zealand's emission reduction target downgraded to "inadequate"

The target ranking system (1) John Key has been relying on (2) to claim New Zealand’s placed well at the climate talks in Copenhagen has just changed the ranking of New Zealand’s target to “inadequate”- the worst ranking possible.

“This is yet another blow to the Government’s excuses for a weak target,” said Greenpeace’s Simon Boxer. “The Government has spent the last week praising the Climate Action Tracker ranking of New Zealand as proof that its highly conditional 10-20% reduction target was sound. Now the ranking says New Zealand’s target is insufficient.”

The reason for the downgrade is that new data about New Zealand forests has now been assessed and taken into account. This is important because tree planting offers a potentially cheap way of avoiding making any emission reductions at all.

The Climate Action Tracker has four classes of target: role model, adequate, medium and inadequate. New Zealand has been placed into the lowest ranking.
Notes to Editor
(1) Climate Action Tracker Assessment

New Zealand's commitment to decrease emissions to 10-20% below 1990 is now rated Inadequate, based on newly submitted data on forest management that allows a calculation of the preferred LULUCF option, which was previously not feasible. We estimate that LULUCF accounting leads to a large credit of uncertain magnitude by 2020. The magnitude of the credit will depend on the LULUCF accounting options ultimately adopted. Both ends of the reduction range are indicated as conditional, which clouds this assessment.

http://www.climateactiontracker.org/country.php?id=1028

(2) Question 7 in the Parliament yesterday (December 15th).

Dr Russel Norman: Is it not the case that his Government has failed to give a clear commitment to support this clause because he actually lacks a Government strategy for reducing New Zealand's domestic emissions?

Hon JOHN KEY: No, and the member will be aware that just last week he was quoting a climate watch group-a group that is known for being environmentally knowledgable-that has done an analysis of countries, based on the relative equivalents that I talked about, and came up with the result that New Zealand is in the median group. It has looked at countries like Australia and said it is in an adequate group. It has taken into consideration everything-from our emissions trading scheme to our target and our support for a global alliance-and determined that New Zealand is in pretty good shape.