Critics urge New Zealand gov't to produce plan to meet new gas emissions target

The New Zealand government was under growing pressure Wednesday to produce a plan to meet its new greenhouse gas emissions target.

On Tuesday, Climate Change Issues Minister Tim Groser announced the "ambitious" target to reduce emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, which was equivalent to 11 percent below 1990 levels.

It was a significant increase on the previous target of 5 percent below 1990 emission levels by 2020, Groser argued.

However, the Forest Owners Association Chief Executive David Rhodes said it was the current government's fourth target and it would require major changes to the government's much criticized Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) if it were to succeed.

"The three previous (targets) were not supported by policies designed to achieve those targets so were effectively meaningless. What we now need are policies that show the government is committed to achieving whatever target it sets," David Rhodes said in a statement.

The latest target was likely to be criticized locally and internationally as being inadequate.

"The fairness of this criticism depends to some extent on whether this is a conditional, aspirational, goal that may or may not be met. If so, then it is no improvement whatsoever on what New Zealand has already offered, in fact it is weaker given that it is another decade distant," he said.

The main opposition Labour Party challenged Groser to immediately set a clear carbon budget to show how the country would meet the emission reductions target.

The government was taking a "cross-your-fingers-and-hope approach" to climate change, Labour climate change spokesperson Megan Woods said in a statement.

"Even the unambitious goals Tim Groser announced yesterday will be difficult to reach under the current approach," said Woods.

New Zealand, which has one of the world's highest per-capita emissions levels, is to submit the new target to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ahead of a new international climate change agreement, due to be concluded in Paris in December.

Business and farming industry groups welcomed the government's target, environment campaigners said the government should set a reduction target of at least 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 if it is to do its fair share in fighting climate change. Endi