Have you heard about the NZ Taxonomy? It’s the latest attempt to sneak the anti-farming climate agenda into the rules controlling New Zealand farming and it’s directly caused by New Zealand being shackled to the Paris Agreement.

What is the NZ Taxonomy?

A taxonomy is a system of classifications. In this case, it’s a framework to classify different “activities” – types of farming and forestry, as well as other land and resource use – by their effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

The Centre for Sustainable Finance is a private trust was set up in 2021 to promote green investment and transitioning to a low-carbon economy – all the sort of thing you’ve heard of before.

They started developing what they call the "NZ Taxonomy" to define what kinds of activities should be allowed to be called "green" or "transitional", which would then affect how banks make lending decisions.

One of their proposed standards, for example, is that a farm would have to emit less than one tonne of carbon-equivalent per hectare per year to be “green”. The most recent studies have sheep and beef at three to five times that figure and dairy at twelve times. There’s just no way for a farm to both break even and qualify.

What then happens, is that banks become reluctant to have their portfolios having too much investment that isn’t labelled “green” and start trying to move away from providing services to farms and the rural economy. Given how the NZ Taxonomy breaks down, that money would wind up in exactly the carbon farming forestry that the Government is trying to tamp down. It’s much like what we were talking about in the Back Off Banks campaign.

Now, some private trust organising the jet-setting types who want to lecture the rest of us who actually make things isn’t really anything new. The difference here is that this Centre for Sustainable Finance took their plans to Climate Change Minister Simon Watts last year, asking for his backing to make them legitimate and, of course, for funding.

Inexplicably, Simon Watts said yes.

So now, backed by the New Zealand Government – whose stated policy is to roll back the fanciful Ardern-Shaw nonsense on climate policy – the Centre for Sustainable Finance has put out their taxonomy and it reads just like an old speech from Jacinda Ardern.

Top to bottom UN conference-speak, vague aspirations that become clear impossibilities whenever they approach having an effect on reality, and the kind of assertions about farming that make it clear no one who has ever touched an animal was even remotely involved.

We’ve contacted politicians across the government parties to tell them to get rid of this taxonomy or at least put it on hold until there can be some sense knocked into it. And, while we’ll be pushing to stop it with urgency, we can’t take our eye off the fact that none of this would be happening without the Paris Agreement.

It’s all down to the Paris Agreement

The Centre for Sustainable Finance say explicitly that they're doing all this to achieve Paris Agreement goals and using Paris Agreement frameworks. This is only happening because New Zealand continues to participate in bad deal that is the Paris Agreement.

Any time someone complains about the NZ Taxonomy and the Centre for Sustainable Finance, remember to ask them whether they support the Quit Paris campaign.

We and the rest of Team Ag might be able to persuade the Government to stop the NZ Taxonomy. But until everyone sees the pattern that each attack on food production is driven by the Paris Agreement, we will keep coming back to this point.

We had the Net Zero Act. We had He Waka Eke Noa and the Farming Tax. We’ve now got the Net Zero Banking Alliance, Mandatory Climate Related Disclosures, and National’s plan for their own Farming Tax in 2030. Even Helen Clark’s fart tax came from the Paris Agreement's predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol. The Centre for Sustainable Finance and the NZ Taxonomy is just the latest iteration.

It’s well past time for the agricultural sector, the rural economy, and the groups that are supposed to look out for our interests to stop merely reacting to each wave as it comes by. It’s time to get proactive – to stop the nonsense at the source.

It’s time to Quit Paris.

It’s your support that has put quitting the Paris Agreement on the agenda, together we can free New Zealand from Paris and the unworkable regulations it sticks us with.

If you want to join the campaign to Quit Paris, stop the NZ Taxonomy, and prevent whatever else the anti-farming movement come up with next, you can donate to the campaign here:

And you can get our Quit Paris banners, bumper stickers, and other campaign material through our online shop here:

Thank you again for your support.

Kind regards,

Bryce, Laurie, and the Team at Groundswell NZ