Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has returned from her travels to Japan and New York for the UN General Assembly and she's labelling the trip a success for New Zealand - with several nations already approaching her to follow our lead.
Ms Ardern told TVNZ 1's Breakfast today about her speeches at several UN events on New Zealand being "a world first" in its climate action initiatives, including bringing agriculture into the emissions trading scheme.
"At a lot of the bilaterals I was asked about how are you progressing this issue? Because this is an area where countries haven't ventured. The reason New Zealand is is because that is where most of our emissions come from and that makes us unique."
She said if the nation develops the technology and instruments needed to sustainably tackle the issues, New Zealand will have "solutions to sell to the world because they will eventually come looking".
"While I was there, already I had countries come up to me and saying please can we share with New Zealand what you're doing because we need to learn.
"New Zealand, in a number of areas, is progressing world first, particularly agriculture, we're doing things that no other country in the world is doing.
Just as the PM’s trip to New York came to and the UN put out a blunt environmental assessment.
"What we need to see internationally is the level playing field because, of course, the criticism we're getting is why are we forcing our country to move in certain areas when our competitors aren't? And that's why we need a global approach."
Ms Ardern said she believes climate change is an emergency and that New Zealand is treating it as such, but added that there was still more that needed to be done.
She said New Zealand needed to make moves on transport and agriculture in particular, as well as bringing people onboard with the issue.
"We haven't got unanimity amongst parliamentarians," she said. "We're doing a number of things that the opposition have opposed, in fact I don't think they've supported anything really we've done on climate change except the first reading of the Zero Carbon Bill so we do need to try and bring more people with us."
The PM met with her British and American counterparts, as well as with key leaders from the tech industry.
The barriers of progress in terms of a global response though were both from developed and developing countries, Ms Ardern said.
Developing nations said it caused an "unsettling shift" in the way they already consume and produce, while in developing countries there was push back saying "it's not fair you're not letting us develop in the same way that other countries already have".
"If we just accept that if we all start pricing carbon, for instance, that's something that will create an even playing field for everyone, and if we share more technology - that's areas where we could all benefit," Ms Ardern said.
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