Today's Budget comes with more than $90m earmarked for the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, which aims to turn the tide on biodiversity loss by 2050. Photo / Lynda Feringa
Today's Budget comes with more than $90m earmarked for the Aotearoa New Zealand Biodiversity Strategy, which aims to turn the tide on biodiversity loss by 2050. Photo / Lynda Feringa
The Government might have already unveiled its biggest green spend this week, with its sprawling new Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) to tackle climate change – but today's Budget still carried some extra bonuses in the environment space.
Unsurprisingly, much of the several hundred-million-dollar spend in the conservation and environment portfolios is going into the Government's sprawling Resource Management Act (RMA), along with more than $90m for its ambitious Biodiversity Strategy.
On Monday, Finance Minister Grant Robertson announced the new ERP would come with a $4.5b climate-focused fund, paid for by Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) revenue, and containing about $2.9b over the next four years.
Agriculture would receive about $710m out of it over four years to help the sector lower emissions – something questioned by environmental groups, given the sector was still outside the ETS.
Vote Environment allocations in today's Budget included around $180m over the next four years for work related to reforms of the RMA – due to be replaced with three new acts – of which about $133m was tagged as contingency funding.
Work around the Biodiversity Strategy, meanwhile, received around $92m in operating totals, with another $2m in capital funding.
Created in 2020, the strategy was last month put into practice with a new implementation plan to protect and manage the country's thousands of under-pressure native species by 2050.
Funding earmarked for the strategy today includes $27m over four years for predator control; 7.1m to protect "flagship" marine species like the critically endangered Maui dolphin; and $30m for goat and deer control.
Alongside that spend, the Budget included $19m in incentives for biodiversity support by private landowners and $179m for the Department of Conservation.
Elsewhere in environment and conservation spends, about $5m in capital funding over four years was going toward rebuilding West Coast infrastructure in the wake of Cyclone Dovi in February, while $2.2m in operating funding over the next year would support a new iwi-owned visitor centre at Punakaiki.
Forest & Bird chief executive Nicola Toki also singled out native forest restoration as a big winner.
The Government was intending to spend $145m on native forest replanting and restoration, along with a further $111m on research into carbon storage in native forests.
But she added that needed to go hand in hand with pest control that supported it, "otherwise we're just putting on a free lunch for deer and goats".
"Seven million a year more in deer and goat control is a start, but will need to be greatly expanded if the country's climate change and biodiversity goals are to be achieved," she said.
"There's little point in attempting large-scale forest restoration projects if deer and goats invade from neighbouring conservation land to eat newly planted trees."
Her group was also pleased to see an increase in baseline aerial 1080 predator control - expanding from 450,000ha to 600,000ha.
"Over time we want to see this increase grow to one million ha," she said.
"We know that when our native species are protected from introduced predators, they can thrive, and that without, we risk losing them forever, like the 62 bird species we've lost since humans arrived in Aotearoa."
About $35m in operating funding over four years has also been set aside to help farmers with freshwater farm plans, which will soon become a new form of regulation across roughly half the country's land area.
Environmental Defence Society chief executive Gary Taylor said climate change and biodiversity loss remained New Zealand's two biggest environmental crises.
"That this Budget provides extra funding for them is a good thing," he said.
"We've been arguing for funding for biodiversity incentives, and it appears they've done this – but on the climate change front, the real anomaly remains the position of agriculture, which continues to be subsidised out of everyone else's pockets."
Greenpeace today also took aim at the Government giving hundreds of millions of dollars in climate-targeted funding to farmers.
Greenpeace oceans campaigner Ellie Hooper said she was also disappointed there didn't appear to be more dedicated funding for a comprehensive programme to fit cameras on fishing boats.
The biodiversity strategy includes rolling out cameras on up to 300 inshore commercial fishing vessels by 2024 – but Greenpeace wants this extended to the country's entire commercial fishing fleet.
