The Canterbury Mayoral Forum approved the Emissions Reduction Strategic Overview and received the Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Plan at its August 2025 meeting.
Emissions Reduction Strategic Overview (PDF 10MB)
The Emissions Reduction Strategic Overview lays a foundation for developing a regional plan for moving towards a low-emissions future.
It provides a snapshot of greenhouse gas emissions in Canterbury, summarising our emissions profile, ongoing emissions reduction efforts across the region. It also sets out opportunities for transitioning to low-emission activities, along with the barriers that exist across many key sectors.
This collaborative work is the first-stage deliverable of the Canterbury Climate Partnership Plan’s Action 2 – work together across the region to build equitable, inclusive pathways, targets, and key actions to support New Zealand’s commitments towards global greenhouse gas emissions reduction.
Key findings of the Overview:
- Efforts to reduce emissions are already happening across Canterbury by industry, central and local government, iwi and mana whenua. However, some of the highest emitters in the region haven’t committed to or implemented emissions reduction actions.
- There are many opportunities to reduce emissions across transport, energy, agriculture and land use, and waste. However, there are also some significant barriers and risks associated with each of these.
- Councils can support, lead or collaborate with other actors to achieve reductions across key sectors, particularly in transport and waste, while also playing a key role in behaviour change.
- The transition to low-emission activities will affect urban and rural communities differently.
- Technological innovations, international policy changes, and consumer expectations, will continue to have an impact on the speed and nature of a reduction in emissions in New Zealand.
As part of this regional transition planning, Canterbury councils are collaborating with nine other regional and district councils across the country on a shared approach to community emissions data collection, emissions inventory assembly, and net-zero pathway development. This initiative aims to help councils better understand how to reduce emissions and support decarbonisation goals.
Next steps for Action 2
The impacts of moving to cleaner emissions activities will be assessed, along with the opportunities presented in the Overview. A range of potential emissions reduction initiatives will be discussed with key stakeholders later in 2025.
The Canterbury Climate Partnership Plan’s Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Plan (Action 9) is a significant step towards building a transparent, evidence-informed approach to climate action that demonstrates regional leadership, strengthens accountability, and supports future planning, decision-making, and investment.
Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Plan (Action 9) (PDF 2MB)
The Plan was developed in collaboration with the Canterbury Climate Change Working Group, under the Canterbury Mayoral Forum, and provides a consistent framework to ensure our actions are impactful and desired outcomes are met.
The Plan outlines how the Forum will measure, evaluate and report on the delivery of short-term climate actions to 2030, the achievement of long-term outcomes to 2050, and the effectiveness of council collaboration over the first Canterbury Climate Partnership Plan period from 2024 to 2027.
