Oral submission on climate-related financial disclosures regime

Tomorrow, Lloyd Kavanagh and Isabelle Smith will be appearing on behalf of LCANZI before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Select Committee in support of LCANZI's submission on the climate-related disclosures regime.

We intend to highlight issues that we have identified with the Bill as set out in our submission which can be found here. These issues include:

• The importance of expanding coverage – in particular, the exclusion of government and local authority agencies from the regime is a fundamental failure of the government to lead by example, and the exclusion of unlisted private entities will cause distortions;

• Why government agencies, like The Treasury, MBIE, NIWA and MfE, should be required to publish centralised data and modelling, without charge, to facilitate compliance. Without open source data, it will be very difficult for smaller entities to gauge the likely physical and transitional impacts on their businesses;

• Why the Committee should consider “double materiality” – ie reporting of material impact of climate change on entities, as well as an entity’s material impact on climate change.

LCANZI are supportive of the implementation of the regime. We want to ensure that the structure of the regime requires NZ businesses and other entities to consider and adapt to the impacts of climate change and encourage investment in sustainable and low-emissions business practices. LCANZI is a non-profit group of over 300 lawyers, concerned to ensure Aotearoa New Zealand meets its commitments on climate change. More information can be found on our website: www.lawyersforclimateaction.nz.