This is the third of four blog posts exploring The Climatics' funding focus areas: elevating the story, building the movement, transforming the politics, and supporting Māori-led action. We've chosen these four focus areas because they each share three qualities: they create outsized positive impact for climate, they are where philanthropy is best suited to contribute, and because they are often underfunded.
In this post we'll explore what we mean by "Transform the Politics" and why it matters more than ever.
Next year, New Zealand heads to the polls. And while elections often feel like a zero-sum game where one side wins and the other loses, climate change doesn't respect electoral cycles. The decisions made by governments about how climate considerations show up in policy, funding, and institutions need to endure beyond the three year terms of our elected officials.
Political transformation isn't just about elections though. It's also about updating how our democracy works so it can respond better to complex, long-term, existential issues like climate change. It’s about holding governments accountable for what they're legally required to do. And it’s about ensuring that our institutions are resilient in serving society rather than a small number of vested interests.
Climate change can’t be meaningfully addressed without government, but at the moment we’re losing ground. That’s why "Transform the Politics" is one of our four funding focus areas.
In its first year in power, the current Government cancelled 35 climate policies from the first Emissions Reduction Plan without proper public consultation. This pattern isn't unique to New Zealand. We're seeing climate policy reversals globally, often along partisan lines. The challenge isn't just winning initial policy victories - even when they're designed and supported in ways that should make them politically durable, we’re increasingly needing sustained effort to keep them in place.
With an election scheduled for next year, there's a window of opportunity to build political support for climate solutions that transcends it’s current positioning as a left or green issue. However, there's well-funded opposition to climate solutions gaining ground internationally, including Atlas Network-affiliated organizations operating in New Zealand. This coordinated opposition understands that political polarisation serves their interests. When climate becomes a partisan wedge issue, it becomes easier to roll back progress with each electoral cycle.
People expect government to do the heavy lifting on climate change. And appropriately so, since their decisions set the institutional frameworks that make it easier (or harder!) for the rest of us to make climate positive choices in our personal and professional lives. But right now, climate action is relegated to being a "left" or "green" issue, making progress vulnerable to being unwound every time political power changes hands. This dynamic needs to shift. That means building support for specific climate policies that cuts across party lines and creating broad coalitions that can sustain climate action across electoral cycles.
Cross-partisan support doesn't just make policies more durable, it can also improve their design. When climate policies must appeal across political divides, they're more likely to address practical concerns about implementation, costs, and fairness. They're more likely to include mechanisms that demonstrate social or economic benefits alongside environmental ones.
New Zealand’s Zero Carbon act is an example of when this succeeds. There was painstaking work on all sides to get this legislation and the 2050 targets across the lines. Compromises were made, details were improved, collective agreement was nurtured. All in the aim of enduring, whole of parliament support for progress on climate change. That type of stability has benefits not just for reducing climate harms, but also for increasing investor confidence, for infrastructure decisions, for businesses’ strategic planning, for primary producers looking ahead. However, the current coalition government has been undermining the Act - defunding, delaying and dismantling projects and work that delivered on the Act’s goals. Consensus can erode and initial cross-party support doesn’t guarantee on-going resilience for climate policy.
When governments fail to meet their legal obligations on climate action, litigation is a powerful tool. Climate litigation is increasingly recognised as a powerful tool for political transformation. Crucially, it isn't about partisan politics: it's about holding any government, regardless of party, accountable to the law as it stands and ensuring that climate commitments made in Parliament are actually implemented, not just announced. Here in New Zealand, one current example is the legal action by the Environmental Law Initiative and Lawyers for Climate Action NZ against the Minister of Climate Change over what they describe as "glaring holes" in the Government's emissions reduction plan. The case isn’t about whether these groups like the policy or not, it’s about whether the Minister has done his job.
When we say the Climatics intends to fund work "Transforming the Politics," this might include organisations with these types of activities:
The key is creating durability for climate action, not just short-term political victories.
Climate change is a decades-long challenge that requires decades-long solutions. The policies we implement need to survive not just the next election, but the next several generations. That requires political transformation that goes deeper than any single campaign or policy victory.
It requires changing the political logic around climate action so that supporting effective climate policies becomes a political asset rather than a liability for politicians across the political spectrum.
As always, we'd love your thoughts - what’s missing from this picture? Where are you seeing green shoots of new possible futures?
With hope and determination,
Pip
It’s worth stating explicitly, that whatever MJ and my historical and future voting patterns might be, The Climatics is firmly non-partisan. I’m using that term deliberately, rather than several of its closely related friends like “apolitical”, or “politically neutral”. Climate change is a political issue, so we need to wade into the often emotionally charged political space - to do otherwise would mean some of the most powerful levers for change don’t get supported. But being “political neutral” or “apolitical” can make it much harder to explicitly point out power imbalances, which too often prioritises or protects existing power holders. Naming and addressing these power dynamics - in politics and beyond - our climate response will get stuck with the status quo. And that’s what got us into this mess. So we’re non-partisan - meaning that we are not aligned to or affiliated with any party or parties. We do not pretend that means we are neutral, but we will be transparent about our values and will be accountable to you - our community - and the future generations that The Climatics is truly here to serve.