2025: Review of Climate Litigation in NZ

This article is written by Molly McDouall, Solicitor at Lawyers for Climate Action and the New Zealand Rapporteur for the Columbia University’s Sabin Centre

2025 was a year of significant change to many of New Zealand’s key climate policies. The Government announced that it will halve our 2050 methane target, halve the number of organisations required to report under our world-first climate-related disclosures regime, and in July 2025, it repealed the offshore oil and gas ban. Most recently, on 4 November 2025, the Government announced a suite of changes to the Climate Change Response Act, some of which are due to be passed under urgency by the end of the year.

However, climate litigation has continued playing a key role in climate governance. The number of climate litigation cases globally ticked past 3,000, and around 56* cases have now been filed in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2002. We have also seen significant developments in international law, with the International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on States’ Obligations on Climate Change (you can read our analysis of that decision here).

This article outlines key themes and cases from climate litigation in New Zealand over 2025, showing how climate litigation is emerging here - and what this could mean moving forward.

Climate litigation is adding pressure to corporate behaviour at a time when the Government is retreating

Greenwashing

This year, New Zealand’s first climate greenwashing case reached a significant settlement. In 2022 and 2023, Z Energy ran an advertising campaign which claimed it was “moving with the times” and was “in the business of getting out of the petrol business”.

Two years after the case was filed, and a year and a half before the trial date was set, a settlement was reached. While not admitting liability under the FTA, Z Energy apologised for any confusion caused by aspects of this campaign, stating that it did not intend to convey that it was stopping selling petrol any time soon. It paid for full-page ads featuring the apology and settlement statement in newspapers across the country. This settlement followed a similar settlement in Australia, where EnergyAustralia publicly acknowledged that offsets do not undo the harms of burning fossil fuels and apologised to more than 400,000 customers of its ‘Go Neutral’ carbon offsetting product. 

Greenpeace still has an ongoing greenwashing claim against Fonterra for Anchor’s claim that its butter is “100% grass-fed”. There was also a settlement of an Advertising Standards Authority complaint, challenging Clarus’ “renewable gas” advertising. While we are yet to see a wave of regulatory litigation in the greenwashing space, as there has been in Australia, we expect accountability for greenwashing to remain an area of significant scrutiny. The Z Energy settlement has drawn a line in the sand for other companies.

Smith v Fonterra continues moving forward

Smith v Fonterra, continues to progress through the legal system, after the 2024 Supreme Court decision declining to strike out the case. This trial is scheduled for April 2027, where climate change spokesperson for the Iwi Chairs Forum, Mike Smith, will argue that seven of New Zealand’s largest emitting companies should be held liable under tort for the harms of their emissions.

In 2025, there were two interlocutory decisions. In the first, several of the defendant companies applied to join as additional defendants everyone whose emissions are significantly greater than those of an ordinary New Zealander – a category that would, as Andrew J noted, logically include China and the United States. The High Court declined the application, holding that it would be inconsistent with the objective of speedy and inexpensive determination of proceedings, as well as contrary to the fundamental principle of access to justice (at [49]). 

In the second, the High Court released a decision in June regarding various applications, which included declining a protective costs order (PCO) sought by Mr Smith that costs would lie where they fall, including protection for any third-party funder that does not stand to benefit or control the proceeding in any way. While noting the obvious merit of the application, the High Court declined the PCO application, particularly in the absence of an identified third-party funder. The High Court did accept that, were Mr Smith not able to access adequate funding for the case, “the material advantage to the defendants would likely be extreme and possibly fatal” to the claim as a whole. It was further noted that “in the case of a pure third-party funder, it seems unlikely that any costs would be ordered against it”.

Judicial Review Proceedings

Lawyers for Climate Action and ELI filed a new case this year, challenging the Government’s decision-making on emissions reduction plans (ERPs). ERPs are the Government’s legally required climate plans - ‘roadmaps’ for meeting our domestic emissions budgets by setting out policies and strategies. 

Among other things, in this case, it is alleged that the Government acted unlawfully by discontinuing climate policies and over-relying on forestry offsetting rather than on gross emissions reductions in its second ERP (2026 - 2030). This is the first challenge to the legality of forestry-based forestry that we are aware of. If successful, this case could result in the High Court ordering the Government to remake its decisions on ERPs, including those on the weight given to offsetting versus gross emissions reductions at source. This is one of the clearest examples of litigation used to ensure that the Government meets their climate legal responsibilities. 

In 2025, another development was the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of Lawyers for Climate Action’s judicial review challenge against the Climate Change Commission and the Government in relation to the Commission’s advice to the Government on the level of ambition of our emissions budgets and NDC1. We are still awaiting the outcome of our leave to appeal decision from the Supreme Court.

Te Tiriti and human rights are becoming sharper in focus

There continue to be critical developments in the intersection between climate change, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and human rights law. 

At the end of last year, the Court of Appeal ruled against a separate claim brought by Mr Smith: this time arguing that the Government’s inadequate climate response breaches his and future generations' rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and under Te Tiriti. Crucially, the Court did not rule out rights-based climate claims in the future. Instead, it found that the particular argument before it was too broad, but left open the possibility of future, more targeted cases succeeding. An application for leave to appeal has been filed in the Supreme Court. 

Further, the Waitangi Tribunal’s kaupapa inquiry into climate change has continued to progress. This inquiry examines how the Crown’s decisions on climate change align with its obligations under the Treaty principles. While Tribunal findings are not binding, they carry moral and political weight, and may shape both future litigation and legislative reforms. 

The growing use of Te Tiriti and rights-based arguments mirrors global trends, where indigenous and human rights frameworks are increasingly central to climate accountability. As the Waitangi Tribunal found in deciding to hold a kaupapa inquiry that climate change “is an existential threat not only to the claimants, but to Māori and the nation”. 

Climate laws are in a state of flux

There are some concerning signs that the Government is willing to legislate away litigation risk, both for the Government and private actors. This leaves even successful climate cases vulnerable to political whims. As just a few examples: 

• Earlier this year, National MP Joseph Mooney introduced a member’s bill (Climate Change (Restriction on Civil Proceedings) Bill). If enacted in its current form, it would have the effect of making any “proceedings commenced before the commencement date and not finally determined before that date… treated as withdrawn” - retrospectively preventing Smith v Fonterra from continuing, despite the Supreme Court’s unanimous judgment that Mr Smith should “get his day in Court”. This would be a remarkable development, preventing the potential development of tort law in response to climate change. 

• Further, just a few weeks ago, the Government proposed substantial changes to the Climate Change Response Act 2002 (CCRA), including weakening and narrowing the legislative provisions underpinning emissions reduction plans (among other changes), the ETS, and emissions budgets. These changes could be viewed as cutting across active litigation and limiting the courts’ ability to scrutinise climate decisions. 

This kind of legislating has also been apparent in environmental litigation in 2025. Parliamentary sovereignty does, of course, allow parliament to legislate over court proceedings and decisions - this is not the first time this has happened, and these developments show that climate cases are not immune. However, with the CCRA amendments in particular, one of the strengths of the CCRA was the hard-fought bipartisan agreement secured in 2019 - with 119 of 120 MPs voting in favour of the CCRA. This, at least, created the impression of a stable, long-term climate framework. The speed with which the Government is moving to reconsider critical aspects of the CCRA underscores the fragility of relying on ordinary legislation to manage an issue of the magnitude and scale that climate change presents, without stronger constitutional protections or rights frameworks.

However, willingness to legislate over climate cases also reveals two important truths. First, climate litigation is having a meaningful impact: enough that the Government is prepared to legislate over and around cases (including while they are still active). Second, even where Parliament does legislate over cases, they continue to function as a powerful driver of accountability in public and legal debate and as a catalyst for law reform. Taylor v Attorney-General is a classic example: a decision that is used as a litmus test against which subsequent government decisions are measured, shaping the evolution of prisoner voting rights in New Zealand. Climate decisions may play a similar role, providing constitutional and public debate ‘guardrails’ against which elected officials are assessed. 

Looking forward, in a system where long-term climate policy appears increasingly politically fragile, climate cases can operate as a counterweight, keeping climate obligations on the public, political, and legal agenda. New Zealand’s climate policy may continue to lag, but climate litigation may very well push us forward.

* Footnote: Any discussion of climate litigation, by necessity, depends on the taxonomy adopted. For present purposes, we use the Sabin Centre’s definition of climate litigation, which is relatively discrete, defining climate litigation as “cases before judicial and quasi-judicial bodies that involve material issues of climate change science, policy, or law”. The University of Melbourne, by contrast, has a broader definition, encompassing cases where climate change is not only a central issue in the dispute but also raised as a peripheral issue, where climate concerns may motivate the case, or where the case has implications for mitigation or adaptation.