Penny Gaylor: Environmental issues key part of Greater Wellington's Long-Term Plan

Penny Gaylor.

Weekly column by Kāpiti's Greater Wellington Regional Council representative Penny Gaylor.

Last week we signed off on our council's 2021-31 Long-Term Plan, which sets Greater Wellington's priorities and budget for the next 10 years, which we've been developing over the past 18 months, and which proudly and loudly has climate change as its driving factor.

A number of notable decisions were made on environment protection matters.

As the Kāpiti Coast representative on GWRC I know there is strong support across our district for stronger commitment to climate change and environmental action.

And as chair of GWRC's environment committee, and as a member of our farming reference group, I'm seeing the same strong commitment is shared right across the Wellington region.

We've increased funding for Predator-Free Wellington Ltd for the accelerated five-phase rollout of pest control in Wellington City.

The Mauri Tūhono ki Te Upoko o Te Ika (Regional Biodiversity Framework) Working Group had its funding brought forward to ensure the success of the programme.

Regional parks received additional resource to help cope with the volume of projects on hand and volunteers management.

Investment was also agreed in the Whaitua Implementation Programme, with Te Awarua-o-Porirua / Porirua Harbour receiving funds to both reduce sediment entering the harbour and take action to remove it.

Since declaring a regional climate emergency, Greater Wellington has focused on how it can reduce emissions and improve the region's resilience to the impact of climate change.

A huge thank you to the many people and organisations for their engagement with the plan and for helping shape the region's progress over the next decade, because there's no way of avoiding the vital issues the plan covers.

Many are fundamental to our wellbeing and directly affect how we live.

This is a transformational plan for uncertain times, and like my colleagues and all the staff at GWRC, I'm really proud of where this plan has landed.

The plan delivers a strong commitment to Greater Wellington's Carbon Neutral by 2030 and Climate Positive by 2035 goals, featuring a programme of public transport decarbonisation and the phasing out of grazing in our regional parks and restoring the land back to its natural state.

The key to getting to carbon neutral is knocking back public transport emissions.

Bus emissions currently make up 70 per cent of Metlink's carbon footprint, or 35 per cent of Greater Wellington's footprint, and moving to reduce them makes real sense.

Decarbonisation means moving to electricity to power all of our buses, and eventually, trains.

So far, we have 98 electric buses in the fleet and more on order. But we need to make a step change to meet our climate goals.

So we're glad the public favoured our proposal that all existing and additional buses (bar a few for emergencies) be replaced with, or converted to, battery electric power when contracts with bus service providers are renewed in 2027 and 2030.

We also want to move to all-electric trains for the Capital Connection replacement and in the Wairarapa over the next decade.

This will cost something like $1.1 billion over 10 years.