'The Nation'

Panel Discussion Presented By Stephen Parker

Response to TIM GROSER interview

STEPHEN Time now for our panel discussion with the Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser, and joining me is Marie McNicholas from Newsroom and Brian Fallow from the New Zealand Herald, Brian you have the floor.

BRIAN FALLOW – NZ Herald Economics Editor
Minister I'm trying to get a sense of the scope of this Alliance on a mitigated, or avoiding a emissions from agriculture, but clearly there's a problem the other way in having the need to adapt the impact in other words of climate change on agriculture. Will the Alliance also be funding or managing research into things like developing drought resistant crops and things of that kind?

TIM When we started out we had a very strong bias towards mitigation, and that’s still frankly in the New Zealand sort of DNA on this issue, but I think we've had to accept that adaptation is part of the transmission process of these new technologies. The possibility of sucking up billions of dollars in adaptation is the thing that worries us, so we're trying to find some balance here, but fundamentally if we want farmers either in highly sophisticated countries like New Zealand, our in Utar Pradesh in India to adopt technologies, it's gotta be part of the adaptation formula as well.

BRIAN You mentioned the sheer financial challenge here, I gather that it's part of the agenda to reach beyond government research institutes to philanthropic NGOs and related companies, how will that work in the context?

TIM Well we're trying to be quite discreet about our contact with the big philanthropics, and I think for good reason. All I can tell you is that some of the real name philanthropic organisations in the world have privately expressed very great interest in this proposal, so we have now charged the New Zealanders a charge with developing rules about how to engage with the philanthropics, I'm hopeful that they will put really serious money into this, as they have into HIV and other developing country problems, because fundamentally this is a developing country problem, yes New Zealand has the problem because we have the structure agriculturally of a developing country and the income of a first world country. So I'm very hopeful we can get some serious finance out of the philanthropics, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself on this.

STEPHEN Well can you give us an example of what sort of people you're talking about?

TIM No because I don’t want to prejudice their positions.

BRIAN But also companies which brings us back to Stephen's point about intellectual property, and it's always going to be an issue isn't it, how do you strike that balance between the incentives and the need to disseminate knowledge?

TIM Correct, and I don’t think I can go much beyond the point I was making to Stephen earlier, I mean we all understand that there's some balance issues here. Is there any issue you want to look at in terms of intellectual property right? Everybody wants human knowledge to be shared evenly, but anyone who thinks a little more deeply beyond stage one also knows that there is an issue here but incentivising research, and that must leave some space for intellectual property rights.

MARIE I was going to say are you thinking about creating safeguards, I mean for instance if the New Zealanders developed something that's slashed methane emissions in cattle, and say for instance the Americans picked that up, ramped up their production, and then also kept up their trade barriers, I mean there's gotta be a partnership there doesn’t there?

TIM That’s absolutely right and that’s why we've been charged with developing the sort of early ground rules of this. We're just feeling our way forward on this very very difficult issue.

MARIE Yeah because you said yesterday that agriculture remains the most protected and heavily distorted part of international trade, so what's the potential here, or what's the implications here for the goodwill and cooperation that you think you're establishing within the Global Alliance, actually flowing into something like the WTO?

TIM Marie I don’t actually see a strong linkage between the huge trade barriers in agriculture and this project. I'd be quite happy to forge a link because our interests are in both sides of that equation, but I think this will go on independently of negotiations about improved access for agricultural products.

BRIAN But isn't there a particular problem here that you're talking about food, if you're going to start attacking methanogens in the guts of cattle or something there's gotta be a risk that someone will turn around and say is this safe, that there could be that kind of ...

TIM Yeah, and I mean that’s something that we have to juggle with as the technologies become available. Always the issue of public safety will be paramount in any food technology and yeah I mean of course we have to ask that question.

STEPHEN You mentioned earlier the Chinese were at the table at the Global Research Alliance, and one of the reasons why I asked about it is I noticed during the week a figure put out that said China is now our second biggest export destination, overtaking the United States. Now doesn’t that speak volumes, we've you know only recently had a free trade arrangement with the Chinese and we've been battling the Americans for years, they’ve got a lot of land which needs to be translated into agricultural productive land, growing population, they're a super power, and here they are having a sneaky look at our technology, so I just wonder whether we're being tight enough on what we have, and who we're talking to about it.

TIM Well I mean I think China is going to play a transformational role frankly for New Zealand. I mean just look at that picture you just sketched out, to have grown our exports by between 40 and 60% depending on which month you choose in 12 months when world trade was tacking, is simply extraordinary, but I think we've seen nothing yet. So I think there are absolutely massive opportunities for us in food exports in particular. There's no way China can actually feed it's own people as they move up the income curve, they’ve got 24% of the world's people, 9% of the world's arable land only, and massive water problems, so we will play a part in China's food security, of that I have no doubt.

MARIE But this raises a question too about whether the food that we're producing that the Alliance is aiming to produce more efficiently and in bigger quantities on fewer emissions is the right food, I mean surely we should be concentrating on those staple rice, maize, I mean some people are gonna argue and I can hear the Green Movement already, why are we trying to feed the world's poor on lamb chops and butter?

TIM Well I'll leave it to Sue Kedgley to talk to you about that issue. Let me just say we are going to do research across the whole spectrum of food production, and many of the things that we'll be doing research on will be what are called cross cutting issues, which are common problems to whatever food is produced, for example soil sequestration, Australia and France, traditionally not on the same side of the fence when it comes to world agriculture trade politics are going to be coordinating then work on that, and so irrespective of what food people want to eat for whatever mix of reasons, religious, income related, cultural, whatever, they’ve still gotta deal with this problem. This is an initiative which is designed to deal with essentially all aspects of food production.

BRIAN I thought it was interesting Professor Searchinger's point that on current projections the world's entire carbon budget would be taken on by agriculture by the middle of the century, but you’ve not only got three billion more mouths to feed, you’ve got huge numbers of people moving from poverty into the sort of income brackets where people have always wanted more of the foods of affluence.

TIM Exactly right, and if you look at any of the standard studies they back up your conclusion in spades, and that’s fundamentally why the Prime Minister and I think all of us, see such a bright future for New Zealand in this area, because you can't cut it any other way, when people's incomes rise they start to want more protein. This is what we do in New Zealand, the key political point here being this – don’t ask developing countries to choose between their food security and climate change, they will always choose food security, they will always trump climate change. What we're trying to do here is to provide a win win answer for all countries, and including our own. I am also extremely confident that this will in the long run produce results that will increase agricultural productivity, because I can't see whichever way you cut it, a situation where either highly as I said – highly sophisticated New Zealand farmers, or US farmers, or poor peasant farmers, are going to adopt technology that lowers their income, which in most cases is synonymous with lowering production.

MARIE I know people talked about IP being the elephant in the room, but I actually think there's two elephants and the other one is actually the climate, because no matter what your technological breakthroughs these scientists come up with and share, the climate might have got away on them by then, I mean countries maybe just too dry.

TIM Exactly, and I think I'm sure that the scientists, this is outside my area of expertise obviously, but I'm sure the scientists will also be thinking as they develop technologies about exactly that problem, how are we going to increase rice production in the sub continent which is you know a huge issue when we're moving into a situation on current projections, there is less water available, they have to develop hybrids that would deal with that reality. So I think you're right you can't separate these issues out.

STEPHEN On the Global Research Alliance we're gonna run the infrastructure around it, is that correct?

TIM Over the next 12 months and then after that we'll see where we go.

STEPHEN And then there's going to be a ministerial meeting?

TIM Yes.

STEPHEN When and where is that likely to happen?

TIM Well we've talked about 12 months, as to the where we shall studiously avoid asking that question.

STEPHEN Back down under?

TIM We shall studiously avoid asking that question till the right time arrives.

STEPHEN Alright well thank you Tim Groser for your time, much appreciated, and my guest panellists, it's been fascinating so we appreciate your appearance.

ENDS

© Scoop Media