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November 2011
INSIDE No double-speak in Page 7
Asset sales in need of some straight talking Page 8 Unprecedented change ahead for irrigated agriculture
Page 10
New chairman appointed for IrrigationNZ
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ETS policy — Carter
By Hugh de lacy The National Party is “talking out of both sides of its mouth” on the inclusion of agriculture in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), according to the Labour Party’s farming spokesman, West Coast list MP Damien O’Connor.
Minister Helen Clark had determined that agriculture should enter the ETS in 2013, but on winning the Treasury benches in 2008 National moved that date out to 2015, and made it dependent on two conditions.
National-led coalition government had dumped Labour’s plan to spend $700 million on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions research, replacing it with its Primary Growth Partnership (PGP).
In the run-up to the November 26 general election, O’Connor said National was trying to suggest to farmers that agriculture might escape being included in the ETS in 2015, if it was returned to power.
These were that “other countries are stepping up to meet their Kyoto Protocol responsibilities,” and that technologies were “available to farmers to use so that their productivity is not impacted,” Carter said.
The PGP had “done more to prop up existing structures and organisations than it has to really inspire and support innovative research,” O’Connor said.
“I think [National is] being dishonest with farmers, and farmers should realise that we’re either in this or we’re not, and that the best way is to get on and develop new science around farming to help us all,” O’Connor told Canterbury Farming. National’s Minister for Agriculture, Banks Peninsula farmer David Carter, denied the charge, telling Canterbury Farming that the Government’s position was clear-cut. The two agree that New Zealand is in a unique position among developed countries in that nearly half of its greenhouse gas emissions come from the burps and farts of its ruminant animals, and that the country has a responsibility to mitigate them even if other countries don’t. The previous Labour Government under Prime
O’Connor said Carter and National were “talking out of both sides of their mouth because overseas at climate change and at international trade forums the Government would be proud of its commitment to the ETS, yet it’s pretending to farmers here that we can walk away from that commitment.” He said that in 1997 Simon Upton, the Environment Minister in the then National Government, had included agricultural emissions in New Zealand’s Kyoto obligations “to give integrity to our commitment.” New Zealand depended on other countries sticking to their commitments so “it would be difficult for us to walk away from one we’ve made in good faith.” O’Connor said he was disappointed that the present
Carter rejected that claim, saying the research was continuing at the Greenhouse Gas Research Unit at Palmerston North. Of his government’s two provisos for expanding the ETS coverage to agriculture in 2015, he said the first was not dependent on other countries including animal emissions in, or even establishing, an ETS. “It means that other countries must take their Kyoto responsibilities seriously,” Carter said. “They might do this in a variety of ways, most likely in developing a carbon tax and an ETS,” but they might also choose to tackle their emissions in other ways. On the development of agricultural mitigation technologies, Carter said, “I personally believe it is unlikely that scientists will have found enough technological solutions
Damien o’Connor
David Carter
to agricultural gasses for farmers to come into an ETS in 2015, but that decision will be made as part of the legislative review” planned for 2014. Early indications of the research were that a range of mitigants might be needed, from new pasture species to a vaccine to reduce the production of greenhouse gasses in the gut, but genetics seemed to hold out the greatest promise. “[Scientists] are accurately measuring the methane emissions of one cow versus another, and one sheep versus another, and getting very significant variations. “The trait looks as if it’s highly heritable, so it’s likely over time we will be able to breed Holstein-Friesians
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with less emissions, but the technologies are going to be a wee way away,” Carter said. He said that, rather than a National Government, it was Labour that unilaterally committed New Zealand to mitigating its agricultural emissions when it ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the overarching global greenhouse gas treaty, in 2005. “That’s what locked it in, but I think the difference between National and Labour is very clear: Labour said, ‘To hell with it, agriculture’s in — in 2013’. “We’re saying, ‘Whoa, steady, we want to do a review in 2015 at the earliest, and it may not even happen then’,” Carter said.