My family and I are lucky to have come through it unscathed, but my neighbourhood in Titirangi has been ravaged.

Many people here and around the wider region have lost their homes altogether.

I’ve seen people’s belongings out on the streets in piles ruined beyond repair, houses swamped and whole properties carved away by slips leaving them unlivable. It’s hard to imagine what that is like.

And it made me angry.

Angry that this storm, and storms like it are now all made more intense by climate change that’s caused by industry that has been left to pollute unregulated for far too long. And this is only the latest in a series of similar climate floods in Aotearoa that have left people’s lives in ruin.

We’ve been let down by governments who have failed to regulate the dairy industry to cut methane emissions. They’ve failed to eliminate fossil fuels fast enough, and failed to redesign our towns and cities to be resilient enough.

They’ve known this was coming. Scientists have been saying it for years. Everyone’s been saying it. But still government has failed to act.

Confronting climate crisis
So as our communities come together to clean up after the floods and help make sure everyone has shelter, food and essentials, our resolve to confront and eliminate the causes of climate change is stronger than ever.

These climate floods have brought home the stark truth: People and communities are paying the price of a climate crisis that’s driven by corporate greed and governments unwilling to stand up to them.

I’ve also been inspired seeing the people coming together to help each other in a crisis. People helping out a neighbour, offering a place to stay, feeding tireless volunteers, donating bedding and clothes to the evacuation centres.

It shows me that we can work together to face the bigger challenges.

This is going to be a big year. With your help we can confront the dairy industry to reduce methane emissions. Together we can push our elected government to act to cut emissions from the biggest climate polluters.

Nick Young is head of communications at Greenpeace Aotearoa. Follow him on Twitter. Republished on a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Only people power can ensure genuine enduring progress on climate and people need to know the truth if they are to act on it. For that reason greenwashing is the enemy of progress on climate and where you stand on greenwashing is the Rubicon of our times.

I have spent decades of my life as a climate activist fighting various deliberate forms of climate science denial propagated by climate polluting companies and their allied political parties, politicians, lobby groups and commentators.

The good news is that we have mostly won that battle. The bad news is that they have a new tactic, greenwashing, which is now a major obstacle to progress on climate change. Greenwashing is when businesses or politicians give a false impression, or spin, on their products or policies to give the impression that they have a positive impact on the environment when they don’t.

We now face a new landscape in which even oil companies claim to be doing their bit for the climate with “carbon offsets” and “2050 net zero goals”. Their aim is to stop real action on climate by making people think it is all under control.

One of the jobs of the government is to sort out the real climate actions from the greenwashing, to hold industry to account. And of course, one of the jobs of the government is to not engage in greenwashing themselves.

The problem with some of the actions of the current Aotearoa New Zealand government is that rather than holding business to account for its greenwashing, on some vital climate issues the government is actually a proponent of greenwashing.

This greenwashing is closely linked to a wrong-headed theory of change which we hear repeatedly from this government — the idea that climate issues can only be solved through consensus, especially consensus with the polluters and their representatives. The idea that we can’t make real policy to cut climate pollution without the consent of the polluters and their representatives is dangerous and inconsistent with the history of making change.

There are fundamental conflicts in the climate policy space — some industries will not accept that they need to cut emissions. The attempt to gloss over these conflicts and seek consensus means the government adopts policies that the polluters will accept, and which consequently do not cut emissions. This policy outcome is then sold to the public as a great victory when in truth it is a defeat — it is greenwashed.

Before getting into the specifics of the problems I want to acknowledge that this government has done some good things on climate. The ban on new oil and gas exploration permits was a win, even though it excluded onshore Taranaki and allowed existing permits to be extended.

The cap on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser was a win, even though it is a very high cap which has yet to be enforced. Greenpeace publicly celebrated these wins and congratulated the government on making these decisions, even while pointing out their limitations.

I tried to provide a transparent assessment of the environmental performance of the Ardern government back in 2020. I spent a decade as Green Party co-leader and I know there are wins and losses in politics and that compromise is a reality of politics in a healthy democracy.

But honestly admitted compromise is one thing, and greenwashing is another.

There will always be arguments as to what is an acceptable political compromise. We need to separate the issue of what is an acceptable compromise to enter government from the issue of greenwashing. Determining what is an acceptable compromise for the Greens to join the Labour government is formally a matter of decision for the Green Party and the Labour Party rather than the climate movement.

People like me are entitled to our views of the compromise, but it is the Green Party and the Labour Party that have to decide if it’s worth it. I am not a member of the Green Party or the Labour Party.

The issue of greenwashing, however, is an issue which is of direct and immediate concern for the wider climate movement. This is because when the government sells their policies as great climate advances, when in reality they are not, it misleads the wider public and the climate movement.

People can think they don’t need to push hard on climate because it is under control, when it is not. We then need to spend our time highlighting and explaining why the claimed win is actually spin, rather than campaigning for meaningful action.

This undermines our ability to get more significant progress on climate policy because the power and leadership to get progress on climate (like all other progressive issues) comes from civil society and if civil society is disarmed by greenwashing then climate policy follows dead end paths, stalls or  stops.

But why is greenwashing the biggest challenge the climate movement faces at the moment. How did we get here?

Goals remain unchanged, but tactics evolve
As I mentioned above, the first thing to understand is that climate policy is unavoidably and irrevocably conflictual, and hence political. That is because on the one hand the enduring overarching goal of big climate polluters in the fossil fuel business and industrial agribusiness is to prevent government regulations that will force them to cut their climate emissions.

While on the other hand the climate movement aims for emission cuts to achieve a stable climate.

This is a fundamental conflict globally, and in Aotearoa, and no amount of pseudo consensus can wish this conflict away.

Big climate polluters believe, rightly, that government regulation and pricing to drive emissions reductions threatens their business models and profitability. Other sectors of the economy, such as IT, can more easily adapt to a low carbon future, but those businesses in the industries like coal and synthetic fertiliser can’t adapt, and they intend to fight efforts to cut emissions all the way.

While their goal of preventing government regulation to force reductions in emissions has remained consistent, their tactics to achieve this goal have changed. And it is understanding the way their tactics have evolved that it becomes clear just how problematic the current government’s climate policies have become.

At the beginning the tactic they used was to deny the compelling weight of scientific evidence supporting the theory of human induced climate change. Climate denial was stock in trade for many right wing parties and agribusiness and oil industry lobby groups from the 1990s through to the 2010s.

But after a while that stopped working so they changed tactics to stressing uncertainty especially in the 2000s. They said climate change might be a thing, but there is so much uncertainty so we shouldn’t do anything about it. They played up the nature of scientific inquiry — that theories are not beyond questioning because they are not religious texts — to emphasise uncertainty and the need for delay. It was really just another form of climate denialism.

Billions spent on climate denialism
The polluting industries spent billions promoting climate denialism and uncertainty in order to block government regulation to cut emissions. They bought politicians, public relations firms and sadly some scientists to promote these ideas to delay action on climate. Their ideas were reproduced widely by the conservative commentariat, and many still are.

I spent many years of my life fighting climate denialism and eventually through the efforts of millions of climate activists we (mostly) won the battle against climate denialism. There are now few major governments or corporations or industry lobby groups that rely on climate denialist arguments to block government regulation to cut emissions.

Straight out climate science deniers have been pushed to the margins like Groundswell or the Act Party.

But the goal of the fossil fuel and agribusiness polluters remains consistent — they still want to stop government regulation to cut emissions — so they need a new tactic. And that tactic is greenwashing.

These days the polluters and their representatives say, “yes climate change is a thing” and “yes we should do something about it and you will be happy to know that we are doing something about it.”

Hence, they argue, there is no need for government regulation. Even though they spent the last 30 years blocking every attempt to reduce emissions and even denying climate science, they argue that they now take it seriously and there is absolutely no need for the government to do anything.

And what they are doing is often nonsense like net carbon zero targets in 2050 or buying offshore carbon credits or an industry controlled pricing mechanism like He Waka Eke Noa, or nitrification inhibitors etc. They don’t actually cut emissions in any significant way.

The purpose of greenwashing may seem relatively retail when it is done by a single company to sell stuff to consumers, but at a systemic level the purpose of greenwashing is to head off government attempts to introduce regulations and pricing that will force emission reductions.

There are of course some corporations and governments taking significant actions to cut emissions, but there are also many corporate and government actions that are just greenwashing.

Separating out the genuine climate actions from greenwashing is something that defines the climate politics of our time. And this is why the approach taken by the New Zealand government is so very problematic. People assume that the Climate Minister, especially a Green Party Climate Minister, will not perpetuate greenwashing, and will call it out, but it has not always been the case with James Shaw, and that makes it all the more insidious.

Government greenwashes the biggest polluter: Agribusiness
Which brings us to the problem with the current New Zealand government climate policy. Climate policy in this country mostly boils down to what you are doing about agribusiness emissions (biogenic agriculture emissions alone are about 50 percent of emissions) and transport (20 percent). The rest matters too but if you aren’t tackling these two then you aren’t tackling climate change.

Transport policy has not been great from a climate perspective but here I want to focus on the bigger problem — agribusiness — particularly intensive dairy.

We have had the same Prime Minister and the same Climate Minister for the nearly five years of this government. There have been a plethora of nice sounding climate announcements — the PM said that climate was her generation’s “nuclear free moment”, we’ve had the so-called Zero Carbon Act, a climate emergency declaration, an independent climate commission established, emissions reductions plans, improved nationally determined targets for reduction, signed the global methane pledge etc.

But there is still no effective government policy to cut emissions from agribusiness, by far the biggest polluter.

The problem is not just that the government is doing virtually nothing to cut emissions from agribusiness, the problem is that it is saying that it is taking climate change seriously.

It is equivalent to the Australian government doing nothing about coal or the Canadian government doing nothing about tar sands oil — all while telling us how seriously they take climate change. This is greenwashing and it is dangerous because many people think climate action is happening.

When the claims of meaningful action are fronted by a “nuclear free-moment” Prime Minister and a Green Party Climate Minister – the general observer could be forgiven for trusting that those claims are true.

The evidence that this government has done very little to cut agribusiness emissions is bountiful but let me focus on just one central area — agriculture and the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

Taking government at its word
The government repeatedly tells us that the Emissions Trading Scheme is the most important tool to cut emissions. This is debatable but let us take them at their word.

If it is so important then why, 14 years after the ETS began in 2008, is the biggest polluting sector, agribusiness, still exempt from the ETS? For 14 years agribusiness lobbyists and industry groups such as Federated Farmers and Dairy NZ have successfully fought a battle of predatory delay to stop their sector facing a price on emissions, apparently the most important climate tool.

And every government (Clark, Key, Ardern) has given them exactly what they want — perpetual delay.

When the ETS was passed into law in 2008, the Labour government of the day delayed agriculture’s entry until 2013. A bad start.

At the time, myself and many others argued against the delay but the Clark government wouldn’t budge. The John Key-Bill English National government (2008-2017) that followed, delayed agriculture’s entry indefinitely. From the perspective of agribusiness, delaying is winning, and they were winning.

For a moment in 2017/2018 it looked like the newly elected Ardern government might have the courage of its convictions and that the agribusiness lobby would finally lose its battle to stop climate action.

The Labour-NZ First coalition agreement explicitly committed them to support agriculture’s entry into the ETS at 5 percent of its obligations. With NZ First’s vote secured, there was a Parliamentary majority to bring agriculture into the ETS. Finally.

Backed down under pressure
But then in 2019 the Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw backed down to agribusiness pressure and instead of agriculture facing a price on its emissions they adopted an industry proposal — He Waka Eke Noa.

He Waka Eke Noa was a proposal from agribusiness for a joint government-agribusiness initiative looking at pricing agribusiness climate pollution. In effect He Waka Eke Noa handed over to industry the design of the system to price their own pollution. New Zealand agribusiness was beside themselves with joy.

In time it would become clear that it was not just that industry would design the system, but they would design a system that they would control going forward.

And, the target date for starting pricing was 2025. That was two elections away — 2020 and 2023 —  and the chances of the current ministers still being there was remote. And if they did manage to win in 2020 and 2023, it was almost unheard of for a government to win a fourth term in 2026 so anything implemented in 2025 could be easily undone.

He Waka Eke Noa’s timelines left the industry partying. And as for the politicians, none of them were likely to be around to get the blame when nothing happened either.

In one of the defining moments of this government’s climate inaction, Jacinda Ardern and James Shaw stood next to Dairy NZ and Federated Farmers to launch the five year He Waka Eke Noa project, instead of implementing their own policy of immediately putting agriculture into the ETS.

James Shaw celebrated He Waka Eke Noa and went so far as to say “nothing about us without us” —  that is he used the slogan of the disability advocacy movement to infer that the agribusiness sector shouldn’t be regulated without their consent and agreement. That was a real low point I must say.

Predictably, three years of delay later, in 2022, the final report from He Waka Eke Noa was released detailing a complicated system that would cut agribusiness emissions by less than 1 percent. The headline reduction was higher but that is because it included the reductions that are supposed to come from technologies that don’t currently exist (magic bullets), the reductions that result from the unrelated freshwater regulations, and the reductions that come out of the waste sector.

Incidentally agribusiness has been saying those same magic bullets have been just around the corner for the last 20 years. If you strip out reductions projected to come from magic bullets, freshwater regulations and waste, the emissions reductions from the He Waka Eke Noa pricing mechanism are less than 1 percent. In addition, under the proposal industry would control the mechanism for regulating their own pollution — classic industry capture.

From the industry perspective He Waka Eke Noa was designed to stop government regulation i.e. stop agribusiness going into the ETS. Under criticism from Groundswell, both Federated Farmers and DairyNZ touted their achievement in keeping their industry out of the ETS.

The National Party also voiced its support for the final report. The Climate Minister was a little more muted.

Most people listening to the government talk about He Waka Eke Noa would think that it has been a tremendous success — after all doesn’t the government always say it wants consensus on climate? Whereas in fact its sole success has been to delay government regulation of agribusiness climate pollution — by three years so far — and, even if it were implemented, by its own calculations emissions would be reduced by less than 1 percent.

That is what consensus with polluters looks like and that is the corner that Ardern and Shaw have painted themselves into.

The purpose of greenwashing is to make us think industry is finally taking climate seriously and hence there is no need for government regulation, while in reality very little is happening to cut emissions.

He Waka Eke Noa is a perfect example of greenwashing:

• It looks like industry is taking climate change seriously with media coverage of all their hard work;
• The new scheme, if it is implemented, is controlled by industry, so full industry capture;
• The scheme has almost no impact on actually reducing emissions; and
• Even if, god forbid, the government were to reject He Waka Eke Noa and instead revert to putting agribusiness into the ETS when it makes a decision in late 2022, it is too late for that decision to be fully institutionalised before the next election, so it will be easily removed if there is a change of government in 2023 and not so hard even after the 2026 election. Predatory delay has been such a successful tactic so far for the industry, why change now?

The Glasgow target
The decisions by this government not to cut agribusiness emissions created cascading international problems of perception for the New Zealand government when it was required to offer a new target for emissions reductions at the Glasgow climate conference in November 2021.

The government wanted to look good with an ambitious target (known as a Nationally Determined Contribution) but had few policies to actually cut emissions. Other countries were raising doubts about the government’s climate commitment. The ETS was supposed to do the heavy lifting but, as the Climate Commission admitted recently, under current settings the “NZ ETS is likely to deliver mostly new plantation forestry rather than gross emission reductions”.

The answer was to use the potential future purchase of overseas carbon offsets to present a net target that looked ambitious.

The Climate Minister announced with great fanfare that New Zealand would commit to a 50 percent cut in net emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. NZ paraded its 50 percent target around the Glasgow climate conference. It sounds good until you realise not only does the target use tricky accounting to make it look much larger than it is, but that TWO THIRDS of the emissions reductions would come from buying offshore carbon offsets.

Sorry about the shouty capitals but nothing yells “greenwashing” quite like offshore carbon offsetting. Carbon offsets are notoriously corrupt, open to double counting, and are the carbon equivalent of papal indulgences. They are what you do when you don’t have policy to cut emissions but want to look good.

Yet this is the government’s plan to reach our international climate target — greenwashing. The Climate Commission has urged the government to contract the offsets fast: “It is essential that the government secure access to sources of offshore mitigation as soon as possible”. Instead of, you know, actually cutting emissions.

And just to show the government is not without a sense of humour they signed up to the global methane pledge to cut methane emissions — without a plan to cut methane emissions! In fact, in case industry was worried, when Shaw returned from Glasgow he confirmed that the government would not introduce any new policies to cut methane. Moooo.

But what about the giant climate bureaucratic superstructure?
Faced with this evidence of greenwashing on agribusiness and the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) some people say “what about the Zero Carbon Act”? That proves they are serious doesn’t it? I think that we do need institutional reform to deal with climate, and I’ve pointed to what we need and some of the problems of the Zero Carbon Act before, but it should not be at the expense of immediate climate action.

Much of the government’s climate policy focus in the last five years has been on building an elaborate climate bureaucratic structure. This began with the years-long process to get cross-party support for the Zero Carbon Act, the years-long process to establish the Climate Commission, then there was the years-long processes to build the carbon budgets and the Emissions Reduction Plan.

These structures and processes do look good but they don’t cut emissions – only regulations and policies that cut emissions actually cut emissions. Now you might argue that over time this bureaucratic superstructure will lead to significant emission reductions, and maybe they will, and maybe they won’t, and maybe they can be improved.

The problem is we don’t have years to wonder and hope. We need to have been tangibly cutting actual emissions for the last five years, and cutting them harder over the next five, if we are to play any part in stalling global climate catastrophe.

Spending five years on not implementing much policy to cut emissions, in order to implement a bureaucratic superstructure that might result in emissions cuts down the road if a future government has the courage to use the climate superstructure to implement the policies that this one has not, is plainly not a serious policy to cut emissions. Just implement the policies.

However, in agriculture, our biggest polluter, there is no ambiguity that this climate policy structure has delivered nothing. The Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) has almost nothing to offer except magical technologies that don’t currently exist. The government’s excuse for offering no serious policy on cutting agribusiness emissions in the ERP is, you guessed it, He Waka Eke Noa. Predictably Federated Farmers really liked the Emission Reduction Plan, because it, you know, didn’t reduce agribusiness emissions!

The 2022-23 Budget that followed the ERP allocated $710 million over four years to agribusiness climate initiatives, but it turns out the money is to look for magic bullets to cut emissions. And some of these magic bullets might be worse — recently $11 million was given to research nitrification inhibitors that kill soil biology in order to cut nitrous oxide emissions following the application of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers.

Killing our soils is the exact opposite of what we need to do. The money in the ERP comes from ETS revenue paid by others, because agribusiness is not required to pay into the Emissions Trading Scheme. It is a giant subsidy from everyone else to agribusiness to maintain the pretence of climate action.

It seems a big price to pay to maintain the pretence — it would be a lot cheaper just to paint the cows green.

Some might argue that the climate bureaucratic superstructure may not achieve much in reality, but it is not actually harmful. Sure, the argument goes, this elaborate policy superstructure has wasted lots of time and energy which could have gone into policies that would actually cut emissions, but it is harmless enough.

Well, maybe you’d only think that if you haven’t been following the litigation. Crown Law, the government’s lawyers, are using the Zero Carbon Act etc to actually block climate action in the courts. Here are two quick examples.

In the most recent case against the Energy Minister’s decision to issue more onshore oil and gas exploration permits, the Minister’s lawyers argued that the Zero Carbon Act allowed for more oil and gas exploration and so it was fine. This is in spite of the fact that the world already has more oil and gas reserves than can be burnt to stay under the 1.5 degree guidance that is in the Zero Carbon Act.

Previously climate lawyers have been able to argue that the global situation for oil and gas must be taken into account but now, significantly, under the Zero Carbon Act, the Crown argues you can only consider the New Zealand situation. So the Zero Carbon Act is being used to justify oil exploration and protect it from legal attack by climate activists.

And in a previous case against the Climate Commission, James Shaw’s lawyers argued that the 1.5 degree target in the Zero Carbon Act was only “aspirational” and not binding on the government.

Marc Daalder reported it thus:

“Crown Law counsel Polly Higbee told the High Court references to 1.5 degrees [in the Zero Carbon Act] used “broad, aspirational language” and it would be “too prescriptive” to argue that the purpose section placed any actual duty on the Government.”

No actual duty on the government from the 1.5 degree target in the Zero Carbon Act is what Shaw’s lawyers told the court. Outside the court, when speaking to climate activists, Shaw says that the 1.5 degrees target is binding, but in court, where it matters, his lawyers argue it is not.

It’s hard to think of a clearer example of greenwashing. There were many people in the climate movement who worked hard to deliver the Zero Carbon Act and honestly believed it would be a significant tool to cut emissions, rather than defend oil exploration against legal attack.

The final argument for these bland instruments like the Zero Carbon Act is that we need to get broad political elite consensus on climate to get change. History tells us the opposite. To choose just one example which is close to the PM’s heart — nuclear free.

Nuclear free New Zealand was not a result of a consensus process. It was vociferously opposed by the National Party and its many allies — they voted against the legislation and spoke out against it. Nuclear free NZ was not won by reducing our ambitions to what was acceptable to the National Party and the US State Department.

Thousands of peace and environment activists campaigned for it and the Labour government eventually came round to their position, and stood up to provide leadership. There was no political elite consensus. The reason that the National Party never repealed the nuclear free legislation when they returned to government in 1990 was because of its broad support from civil society, support that resulted from civil society campaigners and a Prime Minister willing to fight for the policy (once he finally came round to it).

Introducing vacuous climate legislation that achieves little, in order to get the National Party to vote for it, is pointless, or worse.

Winning the debate on real climate action is the only way to ensure it sticks, and greenwashing undermines that public campaigning.

Conclusion
During the 2017 election campaign I bumped into Jacinda Ardern in Wellington airport and she told me my job at Greenpeace was to hold her government accountable. I respected her for saying that and I agreed with it, and still do. And so that is what I’m doing.

The government has done some good stuff on climate, but on the really big and difficult climate policy issues they are greenwashing. And the greenwashing has disoriented and weakened the climate movement and meant that we are getting much weaker climate policy out of this government than we would otherwise.

And I refer to Ardern rather than Shaw deliberately because there is an uncomfortable political reality that sits behind all this: Jacinda Ardern makes the climate policy in this government and James Shaw presents it. The first rule of politics is to learn how to count — look at the numbers and you will understand this government — Labour has a simple majority and Shaw isn’t even in Cabinet.

James Shaw may like the climate policy, he may not, I don’t know. He may be the architect of crucial bits of it, or not, I don’t know. He is allowed to say he would like to improve the climate policy, but he cannot speak out against it and keep his job. And once you dwell on that hard political truth, all this makes a lot more sense.

It’s not my job or Greenpeace’s job to say whether that is an acceptable position for the Green Party to find itself in, but it is our job to call out greenwash when we see it. We believe that only people power can ensure genuine enduring progress on climate and people need to know the truth if they are to act on it.

For that reason greenwashing is the enemy of progress on climate and where you stand on greenwashing is the Rubicon of our times.

Dr Russel Norman is executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa and was co-leader of the Green Party for nine years. He resigned from Parliament as an MP in 2015 to take up the Greenpeace position.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Joe Biden’s controversial fist-bump with Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi crown prince, may help New Zealand to forge its own new direction in the Middle East.

The US president’s trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia showed that despite real concerns over human rights, the Middle East’s strategic importance in the current global geopolitical jigsaw puzzle cannot be ignored.

Biden’s meeting with MBS in the Saudi port city of Jeddah – four years after the horrific killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi – was a triumph of realism over idealism.

In essence, Biden’s trip was all about convincing Saudi Arabia to increase oil production to try to bring down the global fuel prices that have risen sharply since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Biden might have called Saudi Arabia a ‘pariah’ for the Khashoggi killing during the 2020 presidential election campaign – but Vladimir Putin is now Washington’s main adversary.

And in the Middle East itself, the threat of Iran – which the US claims is about to supply military drones to Russia for use against Ukraine – is also a higher priority for Biden.

New Zealand policymakers will be watching Biden’s moves in the Middle East.

After all, New Zealand has also been trying to rekindle its own relationship with the Gulf. Foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta visited New Zealand’s lavish, $NZ60m pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on her inaugural overseas trip in November last year – and she also managed to fit in a side-trip to influential Qatar while she was in the region.

Mahuta pointedly avoided a trip to Riyadh, but Biden’s meeting with MBS will be a signal to New Zealand and other Western countries that the time is right to bring Saudi Arabia in from the cold.

The wealthy Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – a six-country grouping made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – is already New Zealand’s eighth-biggest trading partner.

It holds the potential to become an even more significant market for New Zealand exports, especially in the key areas of meat and dairy.

Indeed, the very modest gains achieved by New Zealand for meat and dairy in its recent free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union mean that improving trade with other key markets – such as the Middle East – is more important than ever.

As Western attitudes towards China have soured, New Zealand ministers have been keen to make trade diversification a major priority.

To that end, trade minister Damien O’Connor embarked on a major mission to the Gulf in March to try and restart New Zealand’s troubled free trade negotiations with the GCC.

A deal with the bloc was signed in 2009 but remains unratified from the Gulf side.

The last big push to try and get the deal over the line was in 2015, under the previous National-led government, when Prime Minister John Key toured Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Around the same time, the ill-fated ‘Saudi sheep deal’ was devised by Key’s foreign minister, Murray McCully, in an unsuccessful bid to appease a prominent Saudi investor who was upset by New Zealand’s ban on exporting live sheep by sea. The deal involved New Zealand sending significant amounts of cash and air-freighted sheep, but it largely ended in embarrassment – and did not deliver the FTA that New Zealand sought.

An acrimonious intra-Gulf split in the years that followed – which saw Qatar isolated by several GCC members – subsequently ruled out any further progress on the deal from the Gulf side. But those divisions were largely resolved last year.

Fast forward to New Zealand’s Labour government in 2022, and O’Connor’s trip was surprisingly successful. It resulted in FTA negotiations between New Zealand and the GCC being restarted.

But despite this success, New Zealand made surprisingly little fanfare of O’Connor’s successful foray into the Gulf. While the trip was announced as part of wider international travel plans, no press release on the outcome was issued after the minister’s trip. O’Connor’s report to Cabinet on the travel is also yet to be publicly released.

To be fair, O’Connor did tweet about his visit to Riyadh – calling it ‘productive’ – and he also announced the ‘reengagement with the Gulf Cooperation Council on an FTA’ in another tweet in April.

The minister also touched on the talks with the GCC in a speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) in May. In that address, O’Connor said New Zealand would focus on ‘goods market access’ in the negotiations, but would also be seeking ‘to update and modernise the agreement’ in other areas such as labour and environmental standards.

Arab media provide some further detail about O’Connor’s movements on his March trip.

A report by the Bahrain News Agency from March 8 said a meeting between O’Connor and GCC Secretary General Dr. Nayef Falah Al Hajraf ‘discussed the means to enhance economic and investment relations between the GCC countries and New Zealand’. A few days later, the same outlet reported that New Zealand had signed a ‘strategic food security partnership’ with the UAE.

The Arabic-language Al-Ain news website even produced an elaborate infographic about the food security deal and O’Connor’s visit.

Of course, the Government may have decided that a low-key approach to the talks with the GCC best serves New Zealand’s interests, especially given the difficulties faced in the past.

But another reason for keeping a low profile domestically almost certainly relates to the sensitivities over the involvement of Saudi Arabia, the most populous country in the GCC by far and its driving force.

In addition to New Zealand’s own concerns over the Khashoggi killing in 2018, a political firestorm erupted in early 2021 when it was revealed that Air New Zealand – of which the NZ Government owns 51 per cent – had been repairing engines for the Saudi military, despite Riyadh playing a leading role in the war in Yemen.

At the time, Jacinda Ardern called the arrangement ‘completely wrong’ and said it did not ‘pass New Zealand’s sniff test’. Air New Zealand summarily terminated the arrangement and returned the remaining parts with the repairs incomplete.

Eighteen months later, the GCC seems willing to turn the page and reconsider a trade deal with New Zealand.

But just as MBS expected Joe Biden to meet him in exchange for Saudi Arabia pumping more oil, he will probably expect Jacinda Ardern to personally visit the Middle East to seal any free trade deal with the GCC.

Of course, New Zealand has considerable experience in balancing human rights and trade issues from its careful handling of the China relationship.

And while Joe Biden has received heavy criticism for his trip, the visit also gave the US president an opportunity to raise the killing of Jamal Khashoggi directly with MBS – and to call the murder ‘outrageous’ while Biden was on Saudi soil.

Will Jacinda Ardern now follow Joe Biden’s lead – and give MBS a fist-bump of her own?

Other items of interest and importance today

NEW BOOK ON THE NATIONAL PARTY
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Blue Blood: how the National Party went to war with itself
Andrea Vance (Stuff): The final hours of the last National Government – and the coronation of Jacinda Ardern as NZ’s youngest PM
Steve Braunias (Newsroom): National’s autopsy report
Toby Manhire (Spinoff): ‘We didn’t know how nasty it got’: Andrea Vance on National’s long nightmare
Kelly Dennett (Stuff): Blue Blood author Andrea Vance on getting the inside story of National’s war with itself

COST OF LIVING AND INFLATION
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Grant Robertson extends fuel tax cut to January, with fuel relief now costing $1b
Rachel Sadler and Leighton Heikell (Newshub): Cost of living: Government placing ‘bandaid upon bandaid’ rather than having plan to address inflation – National’s Nicola Willis
Rosie Gordon (RNZ): Fuel tax cut: Road relief measures ‘not targeted to help those who need it most’
Carmen Hall (Stuff): Struggling families will bear brunt if stagflation hits

HEALTH
Claire Trevett (Herald): Health crisis or not? Andrew Little has the worst job in politics now (paywalled)
Lana Hart (Stuff): Arguing about whether it’s a ‘crisis’ isn’t helping the health situation
Rob Campbell (Newsroom): Band-aids for health staffing crisis are only a short-term patch, says new health boss
Brendon McMahon (Local Democracy reporting): Health minister’s leadership ‘sadly lacking’ – former Coast DHB deputy
RNZ: ‘We see the data, we see the challenges’ – Little defends health system
Jem Traylen (BusinessDesk): It’s time govt got out of the corner on migrant nurses (paywalled)
Hannah Martin (Stuff): Just two weeks’ supply of ‘important’ anti-anxiety medication left in NZ

COVID
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Covid-19 is surging big time but the Government is right to not panic
Tony Blakely and Michael Baker (The Conversation): How are Australia and NZ managing the rising Covid winter wave – and is either getting it right?
Jaime Lyth (Herald): Kelvin Davis and top judges cop flak from health expert after going maskless at indoor event (paywalled)
Tess McClure (Guardian): New Zealand seeks to repeat world-beating Covid response in face of surging cases
Tamara Poi-Ngawhika (Herald): Retail expert says mask use has ‘dropped off a cliff’
Herald: Editorial: Eyes wide shut and bare-faced exposure to Omicron (paywalled)
Herald: Editorial: The persistent presence of Covid-19 (paywalled)
Jamie Morton (Herald): NZ’s Covid future: Michael Baker answers our five biggest questions

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Jayden Holmes (Today FM): Prime Minister could travel to Saudi Arabia if trade deal is revisited
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Jacinda Ardern finally gets lucky break on overseas trips (paywalled)
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Māori vulnerable to US-China fallout in the Pacific, warns Shane Jones
Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom): NZ cannot afford to be comfortable in the Pacific
Christine Rovoi (Stuff): Leaders push for unity in the midst of a Pacific rift
1News: Nanaia Mahuta sounds alarm on Pacific debt
Mike Smith (The Standard): Militarising the Pacific

ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND MIGRATION
Damien Grant (Stuff): We’re following in Sri Lanka’s footsteps
Brooke van Velden (Herald): We need to stop the Kiwi brain drain
Mike Munro (Herald): The workers are heading our way (paywalled)

PARLIAMENT AND ELECTIONS
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Could we take the politics out of politics, and hand it back to the people?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): 2023 Election: Who will NZ fear most? A National/ACT Government or a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government?
Phil Smith (RNZ): Parliament’s cooperative team captains
Steve Braunias (Herald): The secret diary of David Seymour (paywalled)

NATIONAL PARTY
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Christopher Luxon’s support fell amid US abortion debate, poll suggests
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s wrong call – putting NZ business down (paywalled)
Richard Harman: Willis begins to redefine National (paywalled)
Andrew Gunn (Stuff): Explaining is losing with Christopher Luxon
Hayden Munro (Herald): Christopher Luxon’s foot in mouth business faux pas (paywalled)

GOVERNMENT
Rachel Smalley (Today FM): Now is the time for true leadership Prime Minister
Max Rashbrooke (Stuff): Here’s how Labour could outflank Luxon on tax
Steve Braunias (Herald): The rise of anti-Jacinda Ardern ferals, fake news and its advocates (paywalled)
1News: Mahuta hits back at ‘toxic trolling’ after nepotism accusations

LEO MOLLOY CAMPAIGN FOR AUCKLAND MAYORALTY
Jack Tame (Herald): Leo Molloy v Guy Williams backlash – TV interview was comedy but showed Auckland mayoral candidate as he is
Neil Reid (Herald): Rival Wayne Brown calls on Leo Molloy to stand aside from Auckland mayoral race over TV appearance
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Jack Tame vs Leo Molloy vs Guy Williams vs Woke Twitter
Madeleine Chapman (Spinoff): What was Guy Williams trying to do?

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND ELECTIONS
Simon Wilson (Herald): Auckland mayoralty: Is it the Efeso Collins and Leo Molloy show – or still too early to say (paywalled)
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): Latest Auckland mayoralty poll: Winners, losers & predictions
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk): Councils are notoriously stupid and unaccountable
Brent Edwards (NBR): Bigger not necessarily better for local government (paywalled)
Tamati Tiananga (Māori TV): Mahuta says vote to change entrenched racism
Anthony Doesburg (Newsroom): Sage advice for Dunedin’s Green mayor
Erin Gourley (Stuff): Council candidates warned Wellington may need to sell commercial assets
Stephen Ward (Stuff): How to get the ‘local voice’? Community committee trial recommended for Hamilton
Bill Hickman (Stuff): Wellington mayor Andy Foster shares hope for ‘transformation’ of the capital
Stephen Ward (Stuff): Hamilton faces ‘staggering’ array of issues in an ‘extraordinary’ time, CEO warns
Mike Mather (Stuff): Signs of a testy campaign? Hamilton City Council candidates ‘jumping the gun’ on election hoardings
Megan Woods (Herald): Christchurch is already a super city – does it need to become a ‘Super-City’? (paywalled)

CHRISTCHURCH STADIUM
RNZ: Questions raised on who will fund new Te Kaha stadium in Christchurch
Anna Leask (Herald): Christchurch stadium decision – council votes 13-3 in favour of new arena
Steven Walton and Amber Allott (Stuff): ‘Absolutely stoked’: Christchurch to spend $683 million on stadium, following 13-3 vote
Hamish Clark (Herald): Party time in Christchurch – Thank goodness the Stadium will be built (paywalled)
David Williams (Newsroom): Is the new stadium Christchurch’s monorail?
David Williams (Newsroom): In defence of Christchurch’s dissenting three
John Minto (Daily Blog): “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor”

EDUCATION
Janet Wilson (Stuff): Polytech merger’s ills a harbinger for Government’s other reforms
David Farrar: The mega polytech mega meltdown
Dubby Henry (Herald): Poverty, family background don’t explain Māori suspension, expulsion rates – study (paywalled)

SUPERMARKET REGULATION
Sarah Robson (RNZ): Shopping for change: Busting the supermarket duopoly
Gerhard Uys (Stuff): Supermarket code ‘will not be a silver bullet for vegetable growers’
Martyn Bradbury (Waatea News): Supermarket Duopoly whitewash a missed opportunity for Co-governance
John Anthony (Stuff): Supermarket price promotions a direct response to falling public trust, experts say

MEDIA AND COMMUNICATION
Nicky Hager (Newsroom): Investigative journalism in times of trouble
Duncan Greive (Spinoff): How social media abandoned news – and newsletters became existentially important to The Spinoff
Tim Murphy (Newsroom): Today FM hopes for audiences tomorrow
Herald: Newstalk ZB claims top radio ratings spot for 14th year running
Chris Schulz (Spinoff): Too many jobs, not enough reporters: ‘It is a very good time to be a journalist’
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): The future for Morning Report, without Susie Ferguson
David Skipwith (Stuff): Susie Ferguson will leave Morning Report for new role as senior RNZ presenter and journalist
Colin Peacock (RNZ): The worst of times?
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): NZ on Air just gave Spinoff $160 000 to cover the local elections

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT
Hamish Cardwell (RNZ): Climate change poll: Tolerance dropping for those who build in harm’s way
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): Sticks, not carrots, to cut farm emissions – Climate Commission
Alex Zhou (Stuff): Why housing is the elephant-sized hole in our climate plan
Katarina Williams (Stuff): Public overwhelmingly expects more extreme flooding events, more often, poll shows

TRANSPORT
Justin Wong (Stuff): Porirua, Kāpiti Coast councils support making public transport free
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Auditor-General says it will cost $5.5 billion to enable Auckland’s City Rail Link to open (paywalled)
Andrew Barnes (Herald): A message to Auckland Transport: On your bike — or bus or feet (paywalled)

JUSTICE, LAW AND ORDER
Sophie Cornish (Stuff): Police to spend $2 million over two years to investigate bias and racism
Deena Coster (Stuff): Police, iwi Māori justice initiative fueled by a drive to ‘decriminalise’
Deena Coster (Stuff): Let’s tip the justice scales in favour of people

THREE WATERS
Russell Palmer (RNZ): Three waters IT system project could top $500m, warns National
Thomas Coughlan (Herald): Labour asks supporters to back Three Waters in Parliament
Sheryl Mai (Herald): Decision does not compromise our stand on Three Waters reform
Dave Armstrong (Stuff): Fluoride foul-up makes 3 Waters more attractive
Toni McDonald (ODT): Council clear Three Waters process flawed
Georgina Campbell (Herald): Regulator didn’t raise concerns over Wellington fluoride failure

ABORTION
Graham Adams (The Platform): The great abortion beat-up
Caroline Williams (Stuff): Hundreds rally for abortion rights in Auckland after Roe v Wade overturned
Arena Williams; Stuart Smith (Stuff): How easily could the right for an abortion be removed in New Zealand?
Deborah Coddington (Stuff): Abortion is not compulsory, opponents turn a blind eye to facts
Karl du Fresne: Abortion in New Zealand: the statistics

RODEOS
Lynn Charlton (Spinoff): What’s wrong with rodeos?
Virginia Fallon (Stuff): Rodeo is blatant animal abuse and New Zealand must ban it
Newstalk: To rodeo or not to rodeo: Are the rodeo animals safe?
Kate Nicol-Williams (1News): Rodeo legal challenge heard in High Court
Hazel Osborne (Herald): Legality of rodeo challenged in the High Court at Wellington

New Zealand and the European Union have struck an historic free trade deal, “unlocking access to one of the world’s biggest and most lucrative markets” after four years of tough negotiating.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and President of the European Union Ursula von der Leyen unveiled the details in Brussels, but it was touch and go as to whether a good enough deal could be agreed.

The negotiations went right to the limit, with Ardern and Trade Minister Damien O’Connor involved in the last phase of the talks, just hours before the official announcement was made.

The agreement — about 14 years in the making — means New Zealand views it as “commercially meaningful” and as worth putting pen to paper.

Ardern said it was a “strategically important and economically beneficial deal that comes at a crucial time in our export led covid-19 recovery”, covering 27 EU member states.

“It delivers tangible gains for exporters into a restrictive agricultural market. It cuts costs and red tape for exporters and opens up new high value market opportunities and increases our economic resilience through diversifying the markets that we can more freely export into,” she said.

By 2035, the value of New Zealand exports to the EU will increase by $1.8 billion a year, which Ardern said was more lucrative than the benefits gained from New Zealand’s recent deal with the United Kingdom.

Eventually duty free
Eventually, 97 percent of New Zealand’s current exports to the EU will be duty-free, and more than 91 percent of tariffs will be removed the day the FTA comes into effect.

There will be immediate tariff elimination for all kiwifruit, wine, onions, apples, mānuka honey and manufactured goods, as well as almost all fish and seafood, and other horticultural products. It will also become easier for a range of service providers to access the EU, including education.

Meat and dairy have always been a tough sell due to the protected European market; once fully implemented this deal will deliver new quota opportunities worth over $600 million in annual export earnings, with an eight-fold increase to the amount of beef able to be sold into Europe. Duty free access for sheep meat has been expanded by 38,000 tonnes each year.

Red meat and dairy will get up to $120 million worth of new annual export revenue on day one of the deal, with estimates of more than $600 million within seven years.

Quotas have been established for butter, cheese, milk powders and protein whey.

The vast bulk of dairy tariffs will be eliminated within seven years, however the current system is a bit trickier. New Zealand had World Trade Organisation quotas for butter and cheese, but exporters couldn’t make use of them as the “in-tariff rates” were so high it was not economic to make use of them.

For example, butter has a 46,000 tonne annual quota, but the tariff rate was 38 percent.

Cheese break through
Under the new deal, of that quota, 36,000 tonnes will have a 5 percent tariff over seven years — once fully in force that is a $258 million benefit each year.

There has been a stop on New Zealand cheese exports to the EU for the last five years, for the same reason.

But under the FTA there will be immediate access through a tariff-free, annual quota of 31,000 tonnes — worth about $187 million each year to the local industry.

Another particular element of the deal is “geographical indications”; names of products that come with a strong connection to a specific area and ones the EU wants protected from use by anyone outside of that region.

For the cheese makers and the cheese lovers — New Zealand will be able to keep using the names gouda, mozzarella, haloumi, brie and camembert.

Feta, beloved to Greece, will be off the table though and producers here will have to find another name in nine years’ time.

Cheese makers will be able to keep using the name “gruyere”, as long as they had been doing so five years before the deal comes into effect; the same with “parmesan”.

Medicines carve out
There has been a carve out for New Zealand medicines and Pharmac, as patent requirements sought by the EU would have made medicines here more expensive by hundreds of millions of dollars a year — New Zealand refused and that is not part of the deal, the only country in the OECD to have that exemption.

Ardern described the deal as “high quality, inclusive and ambitious”, containing “ground-breaking commitments on environment, labour rights and gender equality as foundational parts of a trade and sustainable development chapter”.

“I am pleased that this FTA also includes a dedicated chapter on Māori Trade and Economic Cooperation,” she said.

While Ardern was drumming up support with European leaders at the NATO Summit in Madrid, Trade Minister Damien O’Connor spent the past week in Brussels nailing down the final details.

He said the deal provided “access for products that were previously locked out in the historically difficult to access European market”.

“This agreement delivers on what has been a long-standing objective of successive New Zealand governments — an FTA with the European Union, which will help accelerate New Zealand’s economic recovery at a time of global disruption,” O’Connor said.

‘Solid’ trade agreement
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said it was a “modern and solid” trade agreement.

“With this agreement, we should be able to increase trade between the two of us by 30 percent — that’s a big step”, she said at the media briefing with Ardern.

“Our farmers on both sides will benefit and they will benefit way beyond tariff cuts because we will work together on sustainable food systems.”

The EU is New Zealand’s third largest trading partner.

On the EU side, she said it meant European investment could grow by about 80 percent, a large number of food products geographical indications have been protected, and nearly all tariffs on exports to New Zealand have been eliminated.

It is a different kind of agreement, covering modern digital rules, and “several firsts”, said von der Leyen, for example, “sanctionable commitments” to the Paris Climate Agreement.

“This is the very first time that we take such commitments in a trade deal… and it contains, again, for the first time provisions on fossil fuels,” she said.

“And we show the same ambition on core international labor standards and on gender equality, to advance women’s economic empowerment.

“So this agreement will bring major benefits to our economies, but also to our societies.”

New Zealand and the EU have also signed an agreement for closer co-operation between law enforcement agencies, allowing greater information sharing and collaboration to help disrupt and respond to transnational organised crime, drug trafficking, money laundering, child sexual exploitation, cybercrime, violent extremism, and terrorism.

‘Deeply disappointed’ – Meat Industry Association
Red meat exporters are “extremely disappointed and concerned” with what they describe as a “poor quality” deal struck with the European Union, representing a “missed opportunity” for farmers.

The Meat Industry Association said the deal agreed will see only a “small quota” for New Zealand beef into the EU — 10,000 tonnes into a market that consumes 6.5 million tonnes of beef annually — “far less than the red meat sector’s expectations”, and one that continues to put them at disadvantage in a large market.

“We are extremely disappointed that this agreement does not deliver commercially meaningful access for our exporters, in particular for beef,” said chief executive Sirma Karapeeva of the Industry Association.

“We have been clear from the outset that what we need from an EU-NZ Free Trade Agreement is market access that allows for future growth and opportunity.

“Unfortunately, this outcome maintains small quotas that will continue to constrain our companies’ ability to export to the EU,” she said. “This agreement is not consistent with our expectations and the promise for an ambitious, high quality trade deal.”

Diversification was even more important with the increasing volatility in global markets and a high quality deal was “critical” to helping exporters broaden their access to other markets, said Karapeeva.

“This is a missed opportunity for farmers, exporters and New Zealanders,” she said.

“It will mean our sector will not be able to capture the maximum value for our products, depriving the New Zealand economy of much-needed export revenue at a time when the country is relying on the primary sector to deliver when it matters most.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Illegal palm oil plantations are destroying protected Indonesian rainforests and other habitats — and New Zealand’s industrial dairy sector is a major beneficiary, says a new environmental report.

The daming report, released yesterday by Greenpeace Indonesia, “Deceased Estate: Illegal palm oil wiping out Indonesia’s national forest”, finds palm oil plantation expansion in national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and even UNESCO sites, across Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua.

Palm oil expansion is the largest single cause of destruction of critical Indonesian rainforests over the past two decades.

The Deceased Estate has report found that there are four palm oil producers with at least 50,000ha of oil palm plantations illegally established inside the protected forest estate.

These producers include Wilmar International which imports palm kernel expeller (PKE) to New Zealand.

PKE is a product of the palm oil industry used as supplementary feed in New Zealand’s industrial dairying.

“Back in 2020, when Fonterra handed control of its PKE imports to Wilmar International, Greenpeace warned of trouble to come,” Greenpeace Aotearoa agriculture campaigner Christine Rose said last night.

‘Illegal deforestation’
“Sadly we’re now seeing evidence of New Zealand agriculture benefiting from illegal deforestation for palm oil and PKE.”

New Zealand is the world’s largest importer of PKE, importing an estimated two million tonnes a year which is used to feed the dairy herd because there are too many cows for grass growth alone to sustain.

“New Zealand’s industrial dairying is cashing in on the destruction of endangered species, critical rainforest habitat and indigenous livelihoods in Indonesia,” said Rose.

“New Zealand’s intensive dairying benefits from ecological destruction in Indonesia while polluting rivers, the climate and drinking water at home.

“The New Zealand dairy sector’s use of PKE to support herd intensification and expansion, effectively outsources environmental costs onto some of the most diverse remaining forests and species in the world, and it has to stop.

“It’s unconscionable that New Zealand is complicit in the illegal expansion of palm oil plantations that undermine indigenous community land use and destroy the habitat of rare and endangered species such as Sumatran orangutans, tigers and elephants.”

‘Highly polluting’
Greenpeace Aotearoa is calling for an end to the importation of supplementary feed like PKE, “because it drives highly polluting dairy intensification in Aotearoa, contributes to rainforest destruction and increases climate emissions both here and in Indonesia.”

Clearance of Indonesian rainforest for palm oil released an estimated 104 Tg (million metric tons) of primary forest carbon from Indonesia’s forest estate between 2001-2019. This is equal to 60 percent of the annual emissions of international aviation.

Greenhouse gas emissions from NZ’s intensive dairy sector, supported by this illegal PKE, are 48 percent of this country’s total.

“With industrial agriculture being New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter, we need an urgent shift away from this high-input, industrial agribusiness model towards regenerative organic farming that works within the limits of nature,” said Rose.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Critics have hammered the Climate Change Commission’s agriculture goals in New Zealand, saying it has missed the mark on methane targets.

In a final 419-page report handed to Parliament yesterday, the commission urged the government to get tough on the way New Zealanders live, move and work, through implementing 33 recommendations.

To help keep global warming below 1.5C it said there should be no more new or used petrol or diesel cars imported, made or assembled in New Zealand by 2035.

The commission asked for substantially more government investment in cheap, accessible public transport, cycle paths and walkways, and no more coal boilers “as soon as possible”, with at least 95 percent renewable electricity used by 2030.

Greenpeace head of campaigns Amanda Larsson said it was all a bit disappointing because the report missed a major weak spot.

“Despite thousands of submissions in favour of climate action, despite huge public mandate out there for climate action, the commission has failed to really take responsibility for the industry that is causing the most climate pollution in New Zealand – and that is the dairy industry,” she said.

“There’s been no real change in its recommendations and the dairy industry still gets basically a free pass to pollute.”

Mechanism to reward farmers
The commission wants the government to decide next year on a pricing mechanism for rewarding farmers who reduce emissions.

It suggests technologies including methane inhibitors – vaccines which can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide burped by cows into the atmosphere – could reduce the country’s biogenic methane emissions by more than 50 percent.

It also sets an overall biogenic methane reduction target of 10 percent by 2030 – which Dairy NZ called “incredibly challenging” and a “big ask” for farmers, saying New Zealand milk already had the lowest carbon footprint in the world.

“We do remain concerned agriculture may be asked to do the heavy lifting if we don’t see urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions. We are all in this together and we must have a fair and balanced plan that requires our communities to contribute equally,” its chief executive Dr Tim Mackle said.

However, Larsson said there could have been strict limits on stock numbers, among other measures.

“We need to cut synthetic fertiliser and we need to cut imported feed and we need to support farmers to transition to regenerative and organic ways of farming.”

Hard-line approach in other sectors
Oxfam New Zealand campaign lead Alex Johnston said the commission was already taking more of a hard-line approach for other sectors.

“The pathways for reducing emissions in agriculture are simply not consistent with keeping to 1.5 degrees,” he said.

“Even if we go as hard as we can on transport and other sectors, if we don’t directly regulate emissions from agriculture and step up our actions in that area, then we’re not going to be able to do our fair share to contribute to this global problem.”

Forest & Bird spokesperson Geoff Keey agreed that agriculture was still getting “a bit of an easy ride” and the measures should be stricter, but he believed there was another blind spot in the report.

He wanted kelp and shellfish beds re-established on coastlines, and measures to stop wetlands drying out, to ensure more carbon did not go into the atmosphere.

“One of the big things that comes out of the report is once we start looking beyond 2030 and 2040, we’re going to need to protect our carbon stores in forests, in the sea and in wetlands. Right now the rules are not strong enough to allow that to happen,” he said.

Someone who felt more optimistic about the report was Niwa chief scientist Dr Sam Dean, who called it “a breath of fresh air”.

Traction on policies
He said there was finally traction on a more “comprehensive” range of climate policies.

“Up ’till now we’ve based our response on the emissions trading scheme, which is incentivised plantation and forestry. Moving away from that to a broader range of policies that are going to actually reduce emissions, especially carbon dioxide, is especially important. It’s something we’ve not managed to do, to date. And it’s something we’re going to have to do really quickly,” he said.

Dean said the difficult part was not writing the report – it was up to the government to rise to the challenge.

He said his plea for the government was to embrace all the recommendations with urgency and he challenged all New Zealanders to show their support and willingness to make changes.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz