The Climate Change Commission has been told to explore options for financial assistance to farmers facing a price on emissions from livestock, Marc Daalder reports
Climate Change Minister James Shaw and Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor have asked the Climate Change Commission to look into ways to financially support farmers who will have to pay for the emissions of their livestock in the coming years.
The request came in September and wasn't subject to a public announcement, although the terms of reference for the inquiry and correspondence between the commission and the ministers is available on the commission's website.
Those terms of reference spell out two specific types of financial assistance that the commission should examine: Structured assistance which applies to all farmers facing an emissions price and conditional assistance which might be targeted to Māori landowners or farmers facing hardship as a result of the price and associated compliance costs.
A brief report from the commission is expected at the end of April, alongside separate recommendations on a pricing system from the He Waka Eke Noa partnership between the Government and the primary sector.
In a letter to commission chair Rod Carr in September, Shaw and O'Connor said the "analysis should clearly assess how the methods for assistance affect the following matters: Effective incentives for and the achievement of emissions reductions that contribute to meeting New Zealand’s emissions budgets and targets in the Act; the practicality of implementation for farmers and growers, and the regulator; any social and distributional impacts on farmers and rural communities; the impacts on Māori interests, particularly where these might be disproportionate; and the risk of emissions leakage."
Carr responded that the commission might also update the April report if new information comes to light and provide the new considerations as part of a June report on agricultural emissions pricing more broadly. That latter report is required by the Zero Carbon Act.
He Waka Eke Noa released rough details of two pricing options for consultation in November. However, it found that neither of the scenarios would see agricultural emissions fall as a result of the price itself.
After returning from the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Shaw told reporters that the result was disappointing.
"There's clearly more work to be done on those proposals before final decisions in March," he said.
"The price does need to reduce emissions, yes, as it does under the Emissions Trading Scheme when it comes to carbon dioxide."
Shaw added that he thought the primary sector was still negotiating in "good faith".
"Ultimately, it's a challenging area and they're finding it hard to make the trade-offs that are needed to be made to get a workable solution."
Greenpeace agriculture campaigner Christine Rose told Newsroom that the Government was "bending over backwards to help industrial agriculture continue polluting.
"While the rest of us pay for our domestic emissions, this kind of government assistance to agribusiness will mean it is us that have to pay the price of industrial dairy’s emissions - just as we are paying the price of their climate inaction by living through increased droughts and floods like the one this week," she said.
"Big agriculture is the country’s biggest emitter at 48 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. Any proposal for public funding to address agricultural impacts, must be money well spent - on ending the problem, not subsidising ongoing pollution."
