Chapter summaries

Chapter 2
Ngā Kohinga Kōrero: mō ngā kōrero akiaki kōhukihuki
Consultation and submissions: what we heard about our draft advice

Summary

The Climate Change Commission (the Commission) has consulted with, listened to, and learnt from thousands of people in preparing this advice.

Between January 2020 and January 2021, Commissioners and staff held over 700 meetings, workshops and hui. We met with different sectors, people, and organisations to introduce ourselves and our work, and to hear views on what needs to be considered in Aotearoa in responding to climate change.

During our consultation phase, from 1 February to 28 March 2021, our team held or attended around 200 events across Aotearoa and talked with an estimated 4,000 people. Consultation is comprised of all our engagement activity and the submissions we  received.

We held a series of online events, including open Zoom sessions targeted at a general audience. Overall, we had over 3,000 people attend these. We attended events to speak with people from community groups, unions, NGOs, business, central and local government, parliamentary groups, and others.

We met kanohi kitea with Iwi/Māori where possible and engaged online where not. We ran a targeted consultation survey for Iwi/Māori – the 100 Coastie Voices campaign. The focus of this was to identify broad issues that Iwi/Māori would consider to be most significant.

We received more than 15,000 submissions through our website, the 100 Coastie Voices survey, the post and by email.

We heard from rangatahi/young people through our collaboration with The Hive, a programme that uses social media to encourage young people to have their say on public policy.

Much of what we heard in our engagement was echoed in the submissions we received. Central themes around the impact of our advice on New Zealanders, the pace of change, and the need to carefully manage the transition to a low-emissions Aotearoa emerged.

The key themes identified through the 100 Coastie Voices survey aligned with what we heard more broadly through consultation – that the Government must uphold its commitments and obligations to Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi and the Crown-Māori partnership in its response to climate change.

In this chapter we discuss some of the main themes and insights from our engagement and consultation in more detail, and share how they have shaped our first advice and will continue to shape our future research, analysis, and advice to government.

While the valuable information we received through consultation reflects the views of many New Zealanders, it cannot be taken to represent the views of all New Zealanders. We are conscious that those who chose to respond to our consultation are highly engaged, and may not represent society as a whole. We have not, therefore, emphasised statistical summaries of the submission findings in our final advice. Instead, we have reflected on the themes we heard most consistently, and some of the areas where people had very different perspectives. We have also considered new evidence that has been provided to us through consultation. We have then re-examined the evidence and our judgements in light of what we learnt to form our final advice.

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Chapter 2 Consultation and submissions: what we heard about our draft advice (PDF 121 KB)