Last week's announcement of the agreement between the Government and farming leaders to develop practical and cost-effective ways to measure and price emissions at farm level has been both hailed and criticised.
We see reason for optimism in this politically savvy move which the Government has described as a world-first partnership to reduce farming emissions.
As has been well-aired, farmers, who are feeling increasingly under pressure over environmental issues, were unhappy at plans for them to join the emissions trading scheme (ETS). In July, the Interim Climate Change Commission recommended farmers join it next year. Agriculture produces almost half of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions.
Figures released earlier this year showed the country's greenhouse gases are continuing to head in the wrong direction, despite the ETS which is supposed to provide the financial incentive for businesses to reduce their emissions and landowners to earn money by planting trees.
With this new agreement, the Government is taking a carrot-and-stick approach, something likely to be more effective with farmers than a stick without the carrot. Crashing agriculture on to the ETS without getting farmers on board would also have allowed the Government's opposition to trot out the anti-farmer rhetoric and apply it to all three coalition partners at the next election and beyond.
The five-year joint action plan gives farmers time to come up with ways of estimating and benchmarking emissions on farms and developing plans on how to mitigate them. Over the five years the Government will work with farmers on an alternative way of pricing on-farm emissions and these will be introduced in 2025.
Farm environment plans will be required which include a climate module, presumably covering both methane emissions and nitrate leaching. There will also be investment in research, an increase in farm advisory capacity and capability, incentives for early adopters of emission reduction, and recognition of such things as riparian plantings.
As part of the justification for the new approach, the Government argues that the ETS was originally developed for a small number of big companies, not tens of thousands of individuals.
The stick may come in 2022 when the situation will be reviewed by the independent Climate Change Commission. If progress on the plan and alternatives to the ETS is not considered good enough, the Government can bring the sector into the ETS at processor level earlier than 2025. If that should happen, farmers would have to pay for 5% of their emissions, a rate agreed as part of the Labour and New Zealand First coalition deal.
The plan provisions will be enshrined in the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill which is expected to get its first reading in Parliament next month.
Those critical of the agreement, among them Greenpeace New Zealand chief executive and former Green Party co-leader Russel Norman, are concerned at the lack of urgency in the plan after years of shilly-shallying by farmers. They also see it as a backdown on the positions of all three coalition partners following the last election.
Dr Norman described it as lily-livered politicking and a "polluters' pact'' between the reactionary farming lobby groups and the Government which was the opposite of climate action.
It is yet to be seen whether supporters of the coalition parties who are concerned about climate change will see this as pragmatic politics which will achieve a significant reduction in emissions or a sell-out which is pandering to recalcitrant farmers. It is a risk all three parties clearly thought was worth taking this far from the election.
Plenty of burps will flow into the atmosphere before we know whether this agreement can fulfill the promise of being one of the most significant developments on climate action in our history, as the coalition Government claims it will. Many will be watching closely and fervently hoping for success.
