New Zealand has become the first country to pass laws requiring banks, insurers and investment managers to report the impacts of climate change on their business, officials said last Thursday.

Climate Change Minister James Shaw said the law meant banks, insurance companies and investment firms would make mandatory disclosures about their portfolios' global warming record from next year.

Shaw, who will head to Glasgow later this month for crunch climate talks hosted by the United Nations, said the disclosures would outline the real-world consequences of investment choices.

"It will encourage entities to become more sustainable by factoring the short, medium, and long-term effects of climate change into their business decisions," he said in a statement.

"New Zealand is a world leader in this area and the first country in the world to introduce mandatory climate-related reporting for the financial sector," he added.

The New Zealand government has introduced several policies to lower emissions, including promising to make its public sector carbon-neutral by 2025 and buy only zero-emissions public transport buses from the middle of this decade.

(Cover image via CFP, with input from Reuters)

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