Hon Jim Anderton

Minister of Agriculture, Minister for Biosecurity
Minister of Fisheries, Minister of Forestry
Associate Minister of Health
Associate Minister for Tertiary Education

Progressive Leader

20 September 2007 Media Statement

Land-based industries’ sustainable future

Measures announced today to tackle climate change are an opportunity to protect our environment, improve our quality of life and give our businesses a competitive edge, Agriculture and Forestry Minister Jim Anderton said today.

“The key themes from feedback on last year’s discussion document Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change: Options for a Plan of Action were that people wanted to see all sectors of the economy playing their part to address climate change. Foresters, in particular, also wanted the opportunity to benefit from the positive contribution they make to climate change. Maintaining land use flexibility and fairness were also vital.

“Having considered this feedback, we have decided, in principle, to pursue an economy-wide emissions trading scheme. When combined with a package of complementary measures, we believe this provides the most flexible, fairest and comprehensive approach to addressing many of the climate change challenges.

“It allows for things such as flexibility in land use change, while ensuring decision makers consider the true costs, including to the global atmosphere, of their actions.”

Jim Anderton said that land-based primary industries were responsible for about 50 per cent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions, coming from about 40,000 individual farms, as well as deforestation.

However, because of the difficulty of changing biologically-based systems, pastoral agriculture will not enter the proposed emissions trading system until 2013.

He said the Labour-Progressive Government would work in partnership with the land-based primary industries to develop new mechanisms and tools to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the sector.

“We are investing more than $170 million over the next five years to develop a comprehensive Plan of Action on Sustainable Land Management and Climate Change. It provides a platform from which all parties can start to tackle the problem through a partnership approach.”

In partnership with the sectors, the Plan of Action will deliver:
• A five-year adaptation programme that will help the land management sector build the capability to address the risk and opportunities from climate change. As part of this programme a $5.7 million community irrigation fund will be established to help rural communities to adapt to increasing drought risk.
• A range of complementary measures to the Emissions Trading Scheme including the establishment of farm scale greenhouse gas monitoring and reporting, and a $50 million Afforestation Grant Scheme that allows landowners who elect not to enter the Emissions Trading Scheme to realise the climate change mitigation benefits of afforestation.
• A five-year work programme aimed at addressing barriers that hinder the private sector capitalising on climate change opportunities. This includes the development of a greenhouse gas footprint response for the primary sectors and reviewing market opportunities such as the creation of markets for emission-reducing technologies. In addition $10 million will be invested in research, development and commercialisation of biofuel and biochar.
• A strategic framework for research to provide a comprehensive research and technology platform to underpin the plan of action and to coordinate the investment of $10 million per annum by 2010 in new research funding into adaptation and mitigation of agriculture and forestry greenhouse gas emissions.
• This will build on the work of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium (PGGRC), a joint government and industry funded research consortium which implemented a five-year research strategy in 2003.
• A Technology Transfer work programme to enhance the ability of the sector to quickly roll out and adopt to new technology.

“Throughout September and October we will be engaging across the country with industry, local government and Maori on the measures outlined in this paper and other actions we can take to complement the Emissions Trading Scheme. “

Further information is available on www.climatechange.govt.nz

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