New Zealand imposed climate emergency as a measure to deal with climate change
New Zealand government recently declared climate emergency in the country after assessing the fatal impacts of climate change and global warming. A majority of parliamentarians voted in favour of the climate emergency declaration while the main opposition National Party voted against it.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern who is known for her green commitments made this declaration reality along with her MPs. Now New Zealand promised that its public sector would become carbon neutral by 2025.
climate emergency declaration was based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s findings that to avoid more than 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global warming, emissions would need to fall by around 45% from 2010 levels by 2023 and reach zero by around 2050.
The programme will be backed by a NZ$200 million ($141 million) fund to finance replacing coal boilers and help purchase electric or hybrid vehicles
In her last term, Ardern's government passed a Zero Carbon Bill which sets the framework for net zero emissions by 2050, with cross party support in parliament.
Now with the passing of climate emergency New Zealand joined a group of 32 countries including Canada , France , Britain that have taken the same steps to Focus efforts on combating climate change by declaring climate emergency. Japanese lawmakers also declared a climate emergency recently and committed to a firm timetable for net zero emissions .
The UK, Ireland, Canada and France have all declared climate emergencies. The UK was the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency following declarations by Scotland and Wales. The current target of UK is to reduce carbon emissions by 80% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050.
In Scotland, a climate change emergency had already been declared - and targets are being set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2045 .
European Union lawmakers also declared a “climate emergency” last year . European Union (EU) legislature voted in favor of the declaration with 429 lawmakers for, 225 against and 19 abstaining. The 28-nation EU is the first multilateral bloc to call a climate emergency, but joins numerous individual countries and cities from Argentina and Canada to New York and Sydney.
It is mention worthy here that in 2019 More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries had declared a stark warning that Earth is facing a climate emergency. The scientists have warned of untold suffering is inevitable without deep and lasting shifts in human activities that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and other factors related to climate change.
