New Zealand’s right-wing government moves to block climate lawsuits

New Zealand’s right-wing government plans to introduce legislation that will prevent private lawsuits that seek to hold companies liable for climate change damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The country’s justice minister, Paul Goldsmith, announced the plans earlier this week and said that the government will amend the Climate Change Response Act 2002 to apply to both ongoing and future court proceedings.

In his announcement, Goldsmith cited an ongoing lawsuit launched by the indigenous climate activist Michael Smith, which targets six prominent companies and major greenhouse gas emitters in New Zealand, including the country’s dairy giant Fonterra Co-Operative Group.

The lawsuit argues that ​the companies’ emissions have contributed to climate change and harmed indigenous ‌land, ⁠interests and cultural rights. Goldsmith said that such cases were “creating uncertainty in business confidence” and that “the courts are not the right place to resolve claims of harm from climate change.”

In a response to the government’s announcement, Smith said that the legislation is “an affront to democracy” and warned that “if parliament can cancel a live court case, then no legal claim is secure at all, once it becomes politically inconvenient.”

New Zealand’s ruling coalition holds a majority of the seats in the country’s parliament, and the new climate law is all but certain to be passed. The new law is just another example of New Zealand’s right-wing government’s anti-climate agenda. Since it came into power in 2023, the government has cancelled or reversed several environmentally friendly policies. Such as a clean car and electric-vehicle discount that was stopped, they have also reversed a ban on new oil and gas exploration, and fast-tracked new mining permits.