20 October 2016

Environmental Report In Line With UnitedFuture Policy - Dunne

UnitedFuture Leader, Hon Peter Dunne, has welcomed the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Climate change and agriculture: understanding the biological greenhouse gases and the exciting opportunity for using native forest carbon sinks the report discusses.

“UnitedFuture recently released a package of environmental policies aimed at making sensible changes with meaningful impact.

“One of those policies was to implement a programme of using unused and Crown land to plant native forests to act as carbon sinks.” Mr Dunne said.

“The report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment provides some excellent analysis on how we can use a programme of native forest planting to New Zealand’s benefit to tackle climate change.

The report, published on 19 October 2016, details how native forests could be re-established on marginal farm land and provides key pieces of information on the beneficial impact of any policy in this area.

“The report highlights the fact that there are large areas of low-productivity grassland that can be transformed into native forest.

‘UnitedFuture’s policy is to work with local communities and farmers to use that type of land to plant native forest.

“That native forest can act as both a carbon sink which, according to the report could capture the equivalent of about 17% of the biological methane and nitrous oxide currently emitted each year for decades.

“More importantly the carbon store would continue to grow for hundreds of years.” Said Mr Dunne.

“Our policy on this is extremely important for our environment and the crucial part of it is that is aims at bringing the Government and agricultural sector together to work on a sensible climate change solutions without undermining the agricultural industry.

“This report provides the baseplate for our policy and shows just how effective it will be.

UnitedFuture released a six point package for future-proofing New Zealand’s environment earlier this year as part of the UnitedFuture core policies for the 2017 election. And can be found atwww.unitedfuture.org.nz/environment .

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