A New Zealand environmental group will be seeking clarification from the minister for climate change following reports of a "worrying" stance during global talks in South Africa.
Climate negotiators in Durban have agreed a pact that for the first time forces all the biggest polluters to take action on greenhouse gas emissions, with a view to creating a binding agreement for cutting back by 2020.
However, WWF Climate Change Campaigner Peter Hardstaff told TV ONE's Breakfast he had heard New Zealand's representatives had been trying to use the talks for the country's personal gain.
"They've been talking about the way emissions credits will be awarded to countries, and New Zealand wants to change the rules so countries where emissions have gone up over the past decade will benefit, and countries that have managed to reduce their emissions will be penalised," he said.
"That's not fair, and if that's right it's not making New Zealand look good in these talks."
He said the change would allow New Zealand to effectively cash in on its credits, after achieving a net reduction in its own emissions through extensive tree planting in the past 10 years.
This would allow the Government to sell on its credits to other countries, permitting them to discharge greater emissions.
Hardstaff said this tactic could backfire when newly planted forests are cut down in the 2020's.
"What seems to be happening is our Government is doing all it can to change the rules in a way that will benefit New Zealand now," he said.
"What's good for New Zealand and this current government is not necessarily good for the planet and good for a global deal."
He said he will be writing to Tim Groser for an explanation.
The package of accords agreed in Durban extended the Kyoto Protocol, the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts, agreed the format of a fund to help poor countries tackle climate change and mapped out a path to a legally binding agreement on emissions reductions.
However, Environmentalists and small nations, which are most at risk from rising sea levels, say the agreement doesn't go far enough and want more urgent action.
"What they've signed up to is to start negotiating an agreement that wouldn't come into force until 2020," Hardstaff said.
"Now the science tells us we need to be peaking global emissions between 2015 and 2020 and get them on a downward trajectory, if the deal doesn't come into force until 2020 that won't happen."
Small island states in the frontline of climate change, said they had gone along with a deal but only because a collapse of the talks was of no help to their vulnerable nations.
"I would have wanted to get more, but at least we have something to work with. All is not lost yet," said Selwin Hart, chief negotiator on finance for the coalition of small states.
Agreement on the package, reached in the early hours of Sunday, avoided a collapse of the talks and spared the blushes of host South Africa, whose stewardship of the two weeks of often fractious negotiations came under fire from rich and poor nations.
"We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come," said South
African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who chaired the talks.
"We have made history," she said, bringing the hammer down on Durban conference, the longest in two decades of UN climate negotiations.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told TV ONE's Breakfast that reducing emissions is a long term issue and the most important development from the Durban talks was getting the US, India and China to agree to the way forward.
