This is at a time when food producers are enjoying buoyant prices and bright prospects from the growing global population and when we should be expanding exports to fund research to tackle the challenges of climate change. NZ’s plantation forests cover 1.7m hectares and farmland 12.6m hectares. The Government’s Billion Trees policy will encourage through subsidies the planting of up to another 430,000ha.
The Zero Carbon Bill enables emitters of carbon but not methane to offset their emissions with forestry resulting in, according to Climate Change Minister James Shaw, another 2m hectares of trees. That creates anomalies where farmers rightly feel aggrieved that fuel companies and cement and steel manufacturers can plant trees to offset their carbon emissions but they must reduce methane emissions from livestock. Ironically, the Government has tightened overseas investment rules on the sale of farmland and houses to foreigners but eased the purchase of land for NZ’s mostly foreign owned forestry companies.
Inevitable changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme and the global focus on climate change will increase the price of carbon, making the economics of forestry even more attractive. This raises some very real questions that have so far been ignored, such as what happens to rural communities when jobs and services are lost as livestock is replaced by trees? Surprisingly, there is also little research into the impact on NZ’s economy of reduced animal protein exports.
Like the sudden ending of oil and gas exploration in Taranaki, the Government is once again being condescending to rural communities by embracing a solution, in this case large-scale planting of carbon-sequestering trees, without discussing the implications with those most affected. It hasn’t learnt from the Taranaki debacle that instead of telling rural communities what is good for them it would do well to listen.
Neal Wallace
