Experts have called for urgent action to curb New Zealand’s high aviation emissions, which ranks sixth in the world in terms of per capita emissions.
China’s state news agency Xinhua reported that New Zealand’s total emissions rose 116 percent from 1990 to 2019.
This rapid growth trajectory runs counter to the Paris Agreement on climate change, according to research by researchers from Victoria University of Wellington and Massey University.
Reducing air travel is a challenge for New Zealand due to its remote location, high proportion of globally separated families, tourism industry and poor public road transport system, said the research article published Friday in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
While technological innovations have been proposed to reduce emissions, the researchers said that none of these innovations would lead to significant reductions in the short to medium term, and that “growth in air traffic seems likely to defeat even the most ambitious technological improvements.”
The researchers called for a national aviation action plan that would include avoiding flights or switching to lower-impact modes of transportation, citing the need for urgent action to ensure aviation emissions remain below 2019 levels permanently.
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