View of the logo of COP30 UN Climate Change Conference, in Belem, Para state, Brazil, taken on 6 November 2025. Photo: AFP / Ludovic Marin
New Zealand has been given the ignominious 'Fossil of the Day' award at the COP30 global climate summit, for its decision to weaken methane emissions policies.
It's the fourth time in five years that New Zealand has received the dud award, handed out by climate NGO Climate Action Network International and designed to shame countries that block progress at the annual talks.
New Zealand was last named Fossil of the Day in 2023, for the National-led government's decision to reverse the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.
It has previously been given the award in 2022 for pushing to delay setting up a loss and damage fund to compensate poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change-fuelled extreme weather, and in 2021 for the then-Labour government's decision not to update New Zealand's emissions target.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere for centuries, methane is a short-lived gas but has huge warming potential.
Reducing methane has attracted growing attention as an 'emergency brake' on warming while the world works on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and remove them from the air.
But in October, the government said it would lower New Zealand's methane emissions target, after a review found that was sufficient to meet a controversial 'no additional warming' goal.
It also scrapped an earlier promise to introduce a price on agricultural methane by 2030.
Climate Action Network International said the weakened methane target was "not science-based".
"It is certainly not consistent with the Paris Agreement or with the [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] principles of equity and responsibility."
About half of New Zealand's overall greenhouse gas emissions are methane emissions - mostly produced by agriculture.
Climate Change minister Simon Watts defended the change in New Zealand's methane policies before he headed to COP30, being held in Belém, Brazil.
He said reducing the size of New Zealand's dairy herd was "not economically rational" and he believed methane-inhibiting technology being developed would be sufficient to meet the new target, without a methane tax.
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Amanda Larsson said the latest Fossil of the Day award was "embarrassing but it's sadly not surprising".
Amanda Larsson. Photo: RNZ / Jonathan Mitchell
"Fossil of the Day is the award no country wants to receive, and today, the shame of receiving it is on Christopher Luxon's Government, who are weakening the requirements for our most polluting industry to take action on climate change."
Larsson said the change to the target followed agriculture industry lobbying and directly contradicted advice from the Climate Change Commission to strengthen the methane target.
The 'no additional warming' target - which aims to get New Zealand's methane emissions back to 2017 levels, was an "accounting trick", Larsson said.
"Other major livestock producers will be looking to us to see whether this approach is worthwhile. Our government has just lit the fuse on a global methane race to the bottom - once one domino falls, others will follow."
Climate Minister Simon Watts. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
Earlier in the week, University of Canterbury professor of physics David Frame told RNZ it was "a good idea" to work on methane, "but only if this is additional to [carbon dioxide] mitigation".
New Zealand remains a signatory to the Global Methane Pledge, which aims to lower methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.
Frame, who served on the independent panel that was tasked with finding an emissions range consistent with 'no additional warming', said if the world as a whole adopted 'no additional warming' as a target, methane emissions would drop by four percent over the next decade.
"That would be progress compared with actual trends."
New Zealand was not incentivising agricultural methane emissions reductions as well as it could, though.
"We should... explore a [low] price on methane emissions, because it's among the best-justified and most effective policy approaches," he said.
"This government may have ruled out a methane price, but governments are like buses - there are new ones along from time to time. Good ideas have a habit of hanging around until someone tries them."
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