Problem

To advance New Zealand’s commitment to move towards a green economy, the Government announced an end to future permits for offshore oil and gas starting in 2018. This decision impacted some regions more than others, and the Taranaki region, where the energy sector represents 28% of regional economic production, was among the most impacted. For generations, the region’s prosperity has long relied on oil and gas, and the energy sector was the source of livelihoods for thousands of workers either directly or indirectly.

Responses

As a response to this policy decision, the people of Taranaki region came together to plan and define a shared vision of their energy transition future. Through a co-design process, over 700 people took part in more than 30 workshops around the region to generate the Taranaki 2050 Roadmap. The draft was launched in May 2019, and underwent a consultation and feedback process before getting finalised in July of the same year. Since then, 11 transition pathway action plans have been designed. The process was overseen by seven constituencies, each of which is on the local governance entity for the transition planning: iwi and hapū (indigenous peoples), workers and their unions, business, local government, central government, civil society and education/training.

Throughout the planning process, the region’s trade unions advocated for decent work to be at the core of planning for new jobs. In one of the action plans, unions secured a proposed focus on support and empowerment for workers during the transition, including job clustering analysis of retraining opportunities and skills audits of the workforce.

Future plans involve developing intervention proposals to enable transitions into jobs with lower-carbon environments as well as a multi-employer redeployment scheme.

Find out more: UNFCCC (p48-49)