Nelson joins Canterbury to become first regions in NZ to declare state of climate emergency

Canterbury has today become the first New Zealand region to declare a climate change emergency.

Nelson City Council followed suit shortly afterwards with Nelson Councillors voting 10 to 3 to pass the motion .

It comes following mounting pressure from activist group, Extinction Rebellion.

An overwhelming majority of Environment Canterbury councillors voted in favour of the move.

Councillor John Suckell was one of two councillors who opposed the move.

"If we are genuinely going to be talking about an emergency we need to task it with all the resources we have, not just narrow the debate to a point where we get rid of cows to solve the equation," he said.

More than 400 councils worldwide are part of the movement. 17 in Australia, 96 in the UK, 382 in Canada and 16 in the US.

Despite today’s historic move, Extinction Rebellion’s spokesperson said this is just the first step.

"It’s not let’s celebrate, it’s let pay attention to the state of our planet and start taking action to get to zero carbon and restore our eco-systems and make sure we’ve got something liveable for the future".