I’m emailing to update you on our campaign to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and some meetings we’ve had with government ministers.

Update on the Quit Paris campaign

Since we started calling for New Zealand to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, both ACT Leader David Seymour and NZ First Leader Winston Peters have made comments indicating they agree that there’s no point being in the Paris Agreement while big emitters are pulling out:

We’re in the early days yet for a campaign on what would be such a big policy turn around, but it’s clear the politicians are getting the message.

So many of you have supported our campaign so far, so we want to let you know our plans. We get a lot of questions about when we will start a protest about the Paris Agreement - and we may get to that point - but there are a few things to get done first.

Unlike you and the rest of our diligent supporters, most people don’t follow politics and especially don’t follow the details of agricultural emissions policy and international treaties. That means they dont know anything about the Paris Agreement and a successful protest to get politicians moving needs some basic understanding of the issues among the people seeing the tractors rolling through town.

Otherwise, those people we need to convince just get annoyed at the disruption and nothing comes of the protest (think of how many protests just make noise, annoy locals, and don’t get anything changed). Groundswell protests always have a clear goal and try to bring the public with us.

From here, we’ll be continuing to inform the public and see what arguments are made against withdrawing so we can make the best case for quitting the Paris Agreement to the politicians.

On those other arguments, we want to cover the main ones we’ve heard in response:

Quitting Paris would hurt our trade agreements

You might hear that our trade overseas, especially for food products, relies on our participation in the Paris Agreement. As we’ve said before, this just isn’t true. The people buying our products overseas are buying them because we efficiently produce high quality food at competitive prices. If there was a premium for low emissions food to be had, New Zealand would already be earning that premium since we’re so much more efficient than most countries’ domestic production.

There is just one case where the Paris Agreement is explicitly mentioned in a trade deal. Our free trade agreement with the European Union says (Article 19.6) that we’ll “effectively implement the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, including commitments with regard to nationally determined contributions.”

But it also says just after that (Article 19.7) that both parties will reduce fossil fuel subsidies and European fossil fuel subsidies are up since the trade deal came into effect.

These deals and breaches of certain bits aren’t a binary on/off switch. Just like New Zealand hasn’t blown up the deal over the EU’s fossil fuel subsidies, the EU won’t blow it up over New Zealand rethinking how the Paris Agreement doesn’t work for our situation.

If New Zealand were to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the EU might say they’re unhappy, but the actual trade consequences would be limited. While the trade deal includes commitments to environmental standards, it does not grant the EU the automatic right to impose tariffs or suspend trade preferences over a withdrawal.

Any formal dispute would go through a consultation process, which is largely cooperative rather than punitive. While the EU could introduce stricter environmental import standards or apply its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) more aggressively, these measures would likely be sector-specific and incremental rather than any all-out economic retaliation.

And that CBAM process is unlikely to hurt New Zealand’s food export competitiveness, given that our food production is among the most carbon-efficient in the world. The CBAM is primarily designed to target carbon-intensive industrial sectors (such as steel, cement, and fertilisers), rather than agricultural products.

The EU’s own interests, such as maintaining access to New Zealand’s agricultural exports and upholding free trade principles, would act as a natural check against an extreme response like tariffs.

In short, the idea of widespread trade sanctions or the dismantling of the deal is highly unlikely. Our trade, even our trade with the EU is not dependent on the Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement exempts food production anyway

This one is more often raised by people on our side who have been following this issue for a while.

It’s true that the Paris Agreement says (Article 2.1.b) that efforts to foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development should be done “in a manner that does not threaten food production.”

There is clearly a way out for New Zealand government, within the black-and-white of the Paris Agreement text, to say that reducing agricultural emissions would threaten food production, as New Zealand food production is already maximally efficient under current technologies and best practice.

And if that had been the case, we might not be campaigning to quit Paris.

But in practice, first the Ardern Government and now the Luxon Government have both set emissions reduction targets so ridiculously high that they would have to eat into agricultural emissions.

We say we need to quit the Paris Agreement because of how the New Zealand political class interact with it in the real world, not just how the text is written up in theory.

So, while it’s correct to say that the Paris Agreement allows for policies to maintain food production, New Zealand politicians have been unable to use it. We need to deny the choice to them all together and quit Paris.

We’ve made real ground so far in this campaign by making it an issue that politicians are talking about and (some) media are asking questions on, but there’s plenty of work left to do. Thank you for your support.

Meetings

Your support and the support from the tens of thousands of other Groundswell supporters means the politicians are paying attention. In the last month, we’ve met with both Todd McClay (Minister of Agriculture) and David Seymour (ACT Leader, Minister for Regulation among other portfolios, and acting Prime Minister at the time).

We told both that we expect action on pulling out of the Paris Agreement, along with other key priorities we’ve been pushing on like rural banking regulations and RMA section 6 land classifications (SNAs, SASMs, etc.).

While you can never count on a politician beyond their interests in the next election, there are some promising comments out of the ministers.

We’ll see if they deliver and keep the pressure on them in any case.

WHO referendum

With our campaign about withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, we’ve had many supporters asking what we think about the petition for a referendum on withdrawing from the World Health Organisation (WHO).

That isn’t a part of the Groundswell mission, but we know it will be something many of you care about. If that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in, you can find out more at www.whoknows.co.nz.

Thank you again for your support.

Kind regards,
Bryce, Laurie, Mel and the Team at Groundswell NZ

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