Chapter 1
Chapter 1
When Manu Caddie was a boy growing up in Tauranga, he and his dad would go out collecting pipi and cockles on the mudflats. "That's not something that we do now. "
A gully on his parents' eight hectare farm, where he'd play as a kid, is a stormwater runoff for a new subdivision; storms this year caused it to slip away, leaving houses beside it red-stickered.
Today, he says, the water and the climate are despoiled. The very ground is sliding away with tragic consequences like those at Mauao-Mt Maunganui and Papamoa this year, and yet the Government is backsliding on its climate trade commitments.
Ministers were dismissive of his iwi's concerns about fast-tracking a three hundred plus metre extension to the Port of Tauranga, he says, that will enable businesses to load more and more exports onto diesel-powered refrigerated ships bound for Asia, North America, and Europe.
That's why Ngati Pukenga Iwi ki Tauranga is joining climate activist Mike Smith and environmental groups in backing a new, no holds-barred-attempt to force the Government to comply with its climate commitments - or face having its Europe trade benefits suspended.
Early on Wednesday, New Zealand time, a Dutch environmental group lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission arguing New Zealand has broken the climate promises in its free trade deal.
The Europe free trade agreement came into effect in twenty twenty-four, intended to boost the twenty-one billion dollars in two-way trade with New Zealand. This is a deal that officials project will increase New Zealand's exports to the European Union by up to one point eight billion dollars a year and boost New Zealand's annual GDP by up to one point four billion dollars.
But it includes clauses in which both sides promise not to weaken environmental protection to attract trade or investment, and to effectively implement the Paris Agreement.
The Dutch group says this was the first European Union trade agreement in which breaking the Paris promise could, as a last resort, cost the offending side trade benefits. To that extent, it's a test case they believe will attract global interest.
After documenting attempts to persuade the Government to take climate action by more traditional means, the complainants are now seeking to hit the Government where it hurts - in its revenues.
Former solicitor-general Una Jagose KC had warned of the impact of a retrospective law to bar Smith's case against Fonterra and other polluters, saying the Government's efforts to tamp down climate litigation were doomed to fail - and would only place a target on its own back.
That was just three weeks ago; now she's been proven right.
This is the first environmental complaint under a bolstered "single entry point" mechanism that requires the European Commission to examine the complaint then advise whether it will proceed with government-to-government consultations and if necessary, an independent panel to resolve the problems.
Eight am update: Trade Minister Todd McClay says New Zealand takes its international obligations seriously and always meets them. We are compliant with the EU free trade agreement.
It's the second time in a number of months that overseas and local environmental groups have joined together to attack New Zealand and its exporters, he says. They've been unsuccessful thus far.
"We have always been clear that we are committed to meeting our environment and climate obligations. However, it is for the New Zealand Parliament and our Government to decide how we do this," McClay adds. "It is not for overseas countries, organisations or lobby groups to tell New Zealand how to meet its obligations."
The groups who've laid the complaint - the Netherlands' Both Ends climate justice group, backed in New Zealand by Greenpeace, iwi, trade expert Dr Jane Kelsey and others - insist this is not an attack on New Zealand farmers and exporters.
Smith, Ngapuhi, Ngati Kahu, was the plaintiff in the case against Fonterra and six other corporates - a case blocked by Parliament after the Supreme Court had cleared it to go to trial.
"The New Zealand Government has knowingly chosen climate regression: reopening oil and gas exploration, fast-tracking extraction, and legislating to shut down my case against major emitters after the Supreme Court ruled it should go to trial," he says.
"It cannot enjoy the benefits of its trade deal with Europe while treating its climate promises as optional. This complaint is not an attack on our exporters, workers or communities. As indigenous protectors of the natural world, we have a duty to generations yet to be born."
Smith says that when domestic avenues for accountability are closed, Māori will seek accountability wherever they can.
Fernando Hernandez is head of trade and investment policy at Both Ends. "New Zealand promised Europe not to weaken climate protection to attract investment, then closed its own courts to a climate case to reassure investors, against its own officials' advice," says Hernandez. "If that is not a breach, nothing is."
Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman agrees. "The New Zealand Government has spent the last three years systematically undermining climate and environment laws, often with the stated purpose of gaining trade benefits."
He argues that's a race to the bottom on environmental regulation, which is exactly what the sustainability chapter of the EU-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement was designed to prevent. Climate groups like Greenpeace had met the Prime Minister, ministers and senior officials many times to warn them they were breaching that chapter. "They have not listened."
Back in Tauranga, Manu Caddie says local iwi and other leaders struggled to get meetings with ministers to voice their opposition to the Port of Tauranga's Stella Passage extension. He says this was a so-called zombie project, blocked under existing laws and consenting processes, then re-enlivened by the Fast-track Act.
The project spent about seven years navigating standard Resource Management Act processes and Environment Court hearings, before being declined referral to the previous government's Covid-nineteen fast-track regime in twenty twenty-one.
Ministers Chris Bishop and Shane Jones announced this month that a new fast-track panel had given the project the green light to proceed. It would allow the installation of new container cranes on the Sulphur Point Wharf, and include the dredging of Stella Passage in Tauranga Harbour to provide sufficient clearance for vessels to berth at the extended wharves.
The Port of Tauranga is New Zealand's largest port by volume, handling roughly a third of all cargo in New Zealand. Bishop said activities at the wharves were constrained by limited container capacity, vessel congestion and the age of the existing infrastructure.
"The Stella Passage Development will address these constraints by enabling larger ships and almost doubling the handling capacity at the Port. This will improve the movement of imports and exports and deliver significant economic and other benefits for the region and New Zealand. "
In the view of Caddie and the complainants, the port extension is just one instance of how the Government has ridden roughshod over documented climate concerns in the pursuit of trade revenues.
But why would the trade apparatchiks on the European Commission be sympathetic to a complaint that threatens to curtail exports from Tauranga and the food basket that is New Zealand?
"If there's any jurisdiction that takes climate change seriously, it seems to be Europe," Caddie says. "I expect the European Commission will have strong advocates for countries to do what they say they're going to do around climate change - and if they choose to ignore this complaint, they will need to justify why.
"These processes exist for a reason. And if they can ask New Zealand to 'please explain', that would be awesome. And if not, I guess they can expect more complaints to come in the future, and they'll need to take them more seriously."