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Successive New Zealand governments have failed to adopt effective climate change policies. A positive, albeit limited, step was taken with the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme in 2008, a scheme founded on a framework of comprehensive coverage, applying to all sectors of the economy and all Kyoto gases, addressing the challenge of creating an emissions trading scheme tailored for a country characterised by large forest sinks and substantial agricultural emissions. Amendments in 2009 created significant changes in the way the scheme operates. These included delaying the entry of key sectors, moving to an ‘intensity' based approach, to the free allocation of emissions units and implementing a ‘transition period’. The development of New Zealand's climate change policy highlights the difficulties of a unique emissions profile and strong political interests, particularly the influence of a powerful agriculture sector. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In recent years, the diffusion of environmental policy innovations has become a topic of considerable interest. Often, studies of diffusion portray it in positive terms, as a process of 'policy learning' or the spread of environmental 'best practice'. Such portrayals, which tend to ignore the political-ideological roots of environmental policy innovation and diffusion, contribute to the depoliticisation of environmental (and sustainable development) decision-making. In particular, the spread of neo-liberal ideology has provided a basis for environmental policy innovations that, under the guise of 'objectivity', tilt the 'playing field' further to the advantage of dominant interests. Thus, the challenging political, economic and social issues generated by the environmental policy and sustainable development debates, which have the potential to re-politicise economic policy (the 'Washington Consensus'), are side-stepped. As environmental decision-making is devolved to 'the market', local government, experts, and the courts, the environmental 'threat' is defused. It is this effect that makes the New Zealand innovations attractive to the governments of other countries, especially those with an adversarial political system. The article analyses the neo-liberal roots, and effects, of New Zealand's New Zealand environmental innovations to demonstrate the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the Environment 2010 Strategy of New Zealand. Rationale for strategic environmental thinking; Evaluation of the Environment 2010 Strategy document; Political obstacles of the adopted strategy; Linkages between the Environment 2010 Strategy and other strategic government efforts.