New Zealand’s commitment to the flawed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is causing environmental, economic and social damage as foreign companies buy up productive farmland to plant pine forests says the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA).
CAFCA Secretary Murray Horton said the sale of farmland to overseas interests who aim to convert it to forestry is by far the most common type of consent that the Overseas Investment Office issues.
“Foreign companies are eager to convert hill country farms to forests it in order to make a quick buck by selling carbon credits to polluters under the ETS”, he said. “Flogging off New Zealand’s forestry rights goes back to the 1980s, when the Rogernomics Labour government sold cutting rights to overseas companies. It was only the Treaty of Waitangi that stopped them from selling the Crown land that the forests grew on.”
Since the creation of the ETS in 2008, however, governments have approved the sale of a huge amount of private agricultural land to overseas companies – much of it sheep and beef farms in eastern regions of the North Island.
Corporate Greed
Examination of the Overseas Investment Office’s records showed over the past ten years more than 95,000 hectares of land has been approved to be sold to overseas companies for $781 million. The two biggest buyers are connected with Ikea, showing large corporations are getting in on the act.
Critics say the practice of covering hillsides in fast-growing, shallow rooted pinus radiata trees creates a number of problems for both rural communities and the environment. It takes jobs out of local economies and stifles biodiversity, which threatens native species.
Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton wants to phase out the ETS scheme. According to Upton, forests would have to remain unharvested virtually forever to offset carbon dioxide emissions.
“This is clearly not possible, since trees have a natural lifespan, not to mention the growing threats of fire, flooding and disease caused by climate change,” said Murray Horton.
“Ask people in Tairawhiti and Hawkes Bay about the downstream effects of planting vast areas of hill country in pine plantations. Slash and logs from clear-fell harvesting devastated farms and beaches and cost lives when cyclones caused floods there in 2023″.
“In summary the sale of farmland to overseas interests to plant monoculture pine plantations can create a perfect storm that is bad for the economy, bad for the environment and bad for people,” he said.
Quite a few years ago, I spoke to a forester and he described the ETS as a rip-off on the country. Thank John Key and National but then Ardern’s Labour eased controls on foreign investment to allow foreign carbon farming greedy investors in. Stupid Key, stupid Ardern.
Allowing particularly foreigners to invest in ruining our countryside .. planting pine plantations for carbon offsets .. is simply one of the stupidest things our country (or more particularly, our politicians) have ever done.
(Apart from perhaps letting Ardern and her cronies loose on our economy, and our country’s borrowings, lol …)
Most of you live in your cities and do not experience first-hand the carnage that is wrought .. the blot on the landscape .. the loss of valuable farmland .. the destruction of rural communities .. the long-term damage to the local economy .. the list goes on.
Why do people .. when they get into government .. have to become so blind to the wider impacts of their stupid decisions?
Why do they have to behave like such farkwits?
We need more data on the likely return on investment in forestry. It appears as if forests being milled today are only returning an accumulated profit of about 1% a year on 30 year old trees. “The only winners are the foreign buyers and the logging companies. People who see forestry as a safe investment are being sold a pup. They are also being left with potential liability for slash damage.
Are our politicians like Luxon and Simon Watts simply pig-ignorant, incompetent, or subversive? Is there any other category that makes sense? Luxon apparently recently told a farmer questioning the CO2 scam not to be silly.
Silly?
Simply staggering. Apparently he knows nothing of what’s really happening. He is no asset to this country.