Review of the Emissions Trading Scheme Submission
Federated Farmers believes Option 3 represents the best option to achieve climate goals sustainably for farmers and rural communities. Federated Farmers also believes that Option 4 could also be a good option if adequately implemented. How either Option 3 or 4 are implemented will be very important. No matter the option chosen, we encourage the Government to work with farming groups, such as Federated Farmers, to ensure that the unique characteristics of farmers and rural New Zealanders are adequately considered.
In March 2022, the National Council of Federated Farmers of New Zealand approved a revised policy on ‘Government policies incentivising the blanket afforestation of farmland’.1 One of the eight policies included in this paper was that “The Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) be amended to limit how many forestry units participants can surrender for non-forestry related activities.” This option is most aligned with Option 3 in the discussion document.
Federated Farmers firmly believes that Options 1 and 2 would be devastating for farmers and rural communities and would leave New Zealand even further out of step with international best practice. Further increasing the demand for forestry offsets will likely significantly harm food production, increase global emissions via emissions leakage and likely undermine political support for the ETS overall. Federated Farmers have been calling for action on this issue for years and does not support a ‘do nothing’ approach.
Federated Farmers would like to use this Review of the ETS as an opportunity to repeat previous requests for the Government to remove the current ‘backstop’ of bringing agricultural emissions into the ETS at the processor level and with full fungibility between long and short-lived emissions. In 2022 Federated Farmers described the processor-level ETS ‘backstop’ as a show of poor faith by the Government and one we opposed when it was announced with the 2020 Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill and SOP 413. We maintain this view.
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Contact:
Macaulay Jones
Agriculture, Sustainability and Trade Consultant