Who do farmers believe about the NZ Taxonomy proposal? CEO of Centre for Sustainable Finance (CSF) Jo Kelly (Opinion, Farmers Weekly, July 22) or Federated Farmers (July 21)?
Having read the taxonomy proposal and accompanying information, our money is 100% with the Feds.
But what is this taxonomy proposal developed by CSF and is it really that bad for farmers?
In a nutshell, it is a system relating to finance that classifies economic activities, including farms, according to their environmental performance. Based on criteria & requirements designed by experts, your farms would be classified green (sustainable), orange (transitioning to sustainable) or red (not sustainable).
What happens if your farm or business is classified red? In the words of the proposal – “our expectation is the only way for them (red) to be aligned with a 1.5 degree future aligned with Paris is for them to be phased out.”
Jo Kelly states a taxonomy is nothing more than a classification tool. This was the same sales pitch we got with SNAs (Significant Natural Areas) – a simple classification tool, recognising areas of special value and beneficial to environmentally progressive farmers.
The problem is not merely having a classification, but all the unworkable rules, the bureaucracy and the cost that goes with it. Welcome to NZ Taxonomy.
Jo Kelly states “This is not about compliance...” or “…telling farmers how to run their operations.” However, buried deep in the technical reports are extensive requirements that must be met for the activity (such as farms) to be taxonomy-aligned. They cover all sorts of practices and thresholds from where you can graze, what fertiliser you use, nutrient management, forestry, manure management, methane reductions, mapping cultural and historic sites etc.
Feds described these requirements as ideologically driven, unworkable and risk doing real harm to rural communities. We agree.
The hook to pull farmers into NZ Taxonomy is through their Farm Environment Plans. Reinforcing our concern the Freshwater Farm Plans are the thin end of the wedge and the softener to capture all farmers into a mandated system that will have Paris obligations on emissions added later.
How did such an outlandish proposal come about and are Feds right that working farmers were not involved? Jo Kelly states, “strong input from industry” and on radio this week that “we’ve gone directly to all of those organizations (DairyNZ, BLNZ, Feds), had conversations throughout the process”.
The reality was none of us were aware of this proposal until 2 weeks before the end of the submission period when someone stumbled across it.
Jo Kelly has also gone to pains to say that the taxonomy is voluntary. Again, we refer to one of the consultation reports where the Minister for Climate Change agreed to advance the NZ Taxonomy proposal and that it would be “initially voluntary, with scope to become mandatory.”
As the proposers of NZ Taxonomy, the Centre for Sustainable Finance haven’t learnt from the HWEN failure. Get farmers offside at your peril. And then, when you get farmers offside, don’t go on the offensive and engage PR spin mode, but pause and make a genuine effort to understand the concerns and reconnect. Unfortunately for CSF, they have chosen the offensive route and lost all our faith and trust.
This is not the first nonsense proposal to stem from NZ being shackled to the Paris Agreement, nor will it be the last. The longer we remain in Paris the more we are going to see unworkable policies detrimentally impacting our farmers, natural environment, and our country. This is because one of the fundamental flaws with the Paris Agreement is its siloed, myopic focus on emissions that disproportionately undermines sheep and beef hill country farmers. More pine trees anyone?
Jamie McFadden.
Groundswell NZ environmental spokesperson
