Climate Change Policies
Improving our position in relation to climate change is of extreme importance to the otter party. This is because as it strives to improve New Zealand’s climate change policies, the country will benefit. High Carbon emissions, as we are seeing now (Stats, NZ,n.d.), have been seen to not only have major effects on human health (Science of The Total Environment, 2021) but also on the environment itself (UN.org). New Zealand’s continuing increase in Carbon emissions comes due to the soft nature of policies affecting New Zealand’s largest export industry Agriculture.
1
Decrease Emissions
The otter party plans to decrease emissions by introducing a policy which achieves a heavy-handed approach to Carbon emissions across all sectors and the public to be trying harder to reach Carbon Neutral status by 2024 and then reach Zero Carbon emissions by 2034.How might we do this? By not putting a band aid on the problem instead addressing the issues regarding Carbon emissions as a whole and coming up with solutions with appropriate guidance from scientists to address these problems. This policy will help in addressing these problems will have positive effects not only to human health but also to stream and drinking water supply as well as additional ecological improvements (NIWA).
2
Improve water quality
Another policy offered by the Otter party will be to not be selective as to what freshwater quality improves but will see improvements over all the freshwater in New Zealand. Part of this would also see improvements in stormwater management. New Zealand’s freshwater has seen relative improvement over most rivers being assessed; it has also seen some degradation to other rivers over time (Environment. govt, n.d.).