WCC 2016 Res 057 - Activity Report

ECO has included oceans in all our discussions of climate change effects and the dynamic processes and feedbacks of the climate-oceans-cryosphere systems destabilisation. We continue to report on and promote the IPBES work and report.

ECO's is supporting and advising the Wellington Community Trust to deploy $2.1 million to regional community groups to work on climate change.
ECO and its member groups are working with local communities and Local government on adaptation and coastal retreat and zoning as well a mitigation in response to climate induced sea level rise.
ECO managed with many in the community and Royal Forest and Bird, to largely stop a local government bill (from two councils) which sought to allow widespread mangrove destruction in violation of NZ's coastal and marine plans and Resource Management and biodiversity protection.

In submissions and in policy discussions, we discourage people who think the oceans is a handy sink for CO2, we draw attention to the science and issue of ocean acidification, the potency of methane at raising temperatures and sea level rise and the disruption to ecosystems from shifting and freshening ocean currents as the Antarctic ice shelves mobilise and melt.
We and many of our member bodies work to insert greenhouse gas emission effects consideration into New Zealand's Resource Management Act and the EEZ and Continental Shelf Act. So far our government has refused to remove the prohibitions in law on this consideration. That reflects the existence of vested interests and an unhealthy and unrealistic Ministerial view that NZ's emissions trading system will price emissions - even though it is manifestly inadequate at its current geographic settings and the exemption of many of the ocean activities.
Under intense pressure from many in the community and with the good offices of ministers, New Zealand has halted the issue of all fresh block offers for new applications for oil and gas exploration except in the Taranaki region. This is a very significant advance, but it still allows those holding permits with a right of exploration to continue and to exercise rights of renewal, and to progress from exploration to mining for oil and gas. We are not permitted to consider either, greenhouse gas emissions from proposed seabed mining. We are working to change these prohibitions, and to achieve further restrictions on oil and gas exploration.

In the context of the Southern Ocean, the high seas, and New Zealand's territorial sea, EEZ and Continental shelf, ECO stresses the importance for biodiversity for human impacts to be avoided and regulated in the knowledge that we need to reduce the climate, fishing., disturbance and sedimentation of the ocean and other stresses on marine ecosystems and biodiversity.