New Zealand's Double Accounting On Carbon Credits

The Guardian columnist Fred Pearce has published a response to the NZ government's rebuttal of his report last month about the country's shameful attempts at Greenwashing. (See 100% pure myth exposed by British press for background)

In his most recent report he has accused the government of keeping two sets of carbons accounts. Even though he accepts that New Zealand is absorbing more carbon today than it was in 1990, he states that it is only a"bit more" and not enough to bring it under Kyoto compliance. He goes on to say that a spokesman to climate change minister Nick Smith told him that

"those are not the only numbers. "The convention inventory includes a wider set of activities than under the Kyoto protocol." In a nutshell, the Kyoto protocol allows New Zealand to ignore what is happening across the wider landscape and simply report the growth of its 600,000 hectares of new forests, planted mostly during the 1990s.

That sounds dodgy, though within the Kyoto rules. Even so, if these "Kyoto forests" had been specifically planted as part of a genuine policy to cut the country's long-term contribution to global warming – we might still applaud.

Unfortunately it is not quite like that. Those forests are not long-term sinks; they are commercial plantations. As Smith's spokesman told me, they "are likely to be harvested in the 2020s". And, he added: "The government has no intention to ban the harvest." When they are harvested their carbon will return to the atmosphere."

 Which means that New Zealand is simply passing on the problem to a future generation to deal with when the forests are felled in 2020, a time in which even deeper cuts in emissions will be required.

"The government's own civil servants seem to agree. The New Zealand Treasury recently called the carbon accumulating in the Kyoto forests a "contingent liability". It warned that negotiators should take this into account when agreeing future emissions targets – such as a Copenhagen deal on 2020 emissions.

There is a final problem for New Zealand's carbon credentials. The government's scientists have, in the past couple of years, been reassessing all their figures in a way remarkably beneficial to the government. Last April, they reported to ministers of the incoming government that emissions from deforestation were almost 10m tonnes a year less than previously supposed "due to new data showing smaller trees being felled". Meanwhile, they said, the Kyoto forests were absorbing a quarter more carbon than previously supposed "due to the trees not being thinned and being planted on better soils.

Cheat's Charter
Very handy. But even Smith was moved to note the "volatility" of the numbers.
A number of scientists have been pointing out for some years that the Kyoto rules on forests were an Achilles heel in the protocol. "If [countries] plant sink forests and make inflated claims for them, they know it will be impossible to either prove or disprove those claims. It really is a cheat's charter," warned Michael Obersteiner of the forestry division of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), a thinktank based in Laxenburg, Austria, back in 2000.
It may not be cheating, but New Zealand seems determined to prove him right."

Only brave soul has leaped to New Zealand's defence by stating that carbon will be sequestered in construction timber, whilst this may be true to a certain extent New Zealand households burn one heck of a lot of wood to keep warm every winter. One study of a large Lyttleton house with a floor area of 330 sq m, showed it used little electricity but more than 53,000KWh worth of firewood each year whilst another promoted as a zero energy home used an LPG heater and a log burner with a wetback. See NZ's high winter death rate and burning wood to keep warm. 

In June of this year  the Environment Minister Nick Smith admitted that 10 NZ cities and towns are unlikely to meet air quality targets by the year 2013, saying that the overwhelming proportion of pollution is caused by home fires. And the solution to not meeting those targets?.....the goal posts will be moved.

No doubt they too were made of wood.


 
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Responses To Guardian Article "New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth"

 The reader responses have been coming in thick and fast to the Guardian's website after the above article was published on Thursday. Please see blog post 100% Pure Myth Exposed By British Press.

Here are a few of the reader comments, starting with a very typical 'Pom Bashing' rant, followed by the usual 'but other places are worse than us' excuse that is often used to shrug off responsibility or accountability. Fortunately some New Zealander's are more enlightened than Koseyboy:

Koseyboy
I'm a kiwi and proud of it. After reading some of the comments below all I can say is if you have such a problem with NZ then don't live here. (that's all you whinging P*ms by the way) All this talk about NZ being one of the top producers of CO2 emissions per head of population is a load of rubbish in the greater scheme of things. We may very well have a bad score per head of population, but as a country we are responsible for only 0.2% of all CO2 emissions produced in the world! Similarly, Australia accounts for around 2%. Behind China and the US, the EU is the third biggest producer of these gasses. Now I may be being cynical, but if you can tell me how "dirty" old NZ can really influence climate change, then I am all ears....I think the not so green EU need to sort there own back yard out before they go pointing their "not so green" fingers at others.

Speedy1
Good points about rampant european consumerism and imports driving emissions from other countries... but we in new zealand are rampantly consumeristic as well and buy a fair amount of our stuff from china (and infact have unfortunately exported some of our industry there aswell ... infact havent we just signed a free trade deal or something?)so we cant really criticise too much.
Again the issue is that we have stuck our head up above that parapet with a ridiculous clean green 100% pure lie that we use to increase our exports and promote tourism. It does not matter what the UK or USA or Australia do because they are not bullsh*tting about being a clean green environmentally friendly country. we are the hypocrites and calling people names when they point it out is unjustified.

JimboB1234

"Auckland city (half the population live there) has a lot to answer for in terms of emissions. Terrible public transport means you can't plausibly survive there without a car.
Insulation in NZ is poor by UK standards. Brick houses aren't the norm, I think this due to the earthquake risks. Still I feel a lot could be done to improve insulation and building standards in NZ.
The farming in NZ produces meat that is consumed for the most part outside of NZ. There is a bit of China-syndrome here, shouldn't the overseas consumers be responsible for the omissions?
I think NZers themselves (I am one myself) also buy into the "we are clean and green" idea. There is a real lack of knowledge about the negative impact we have on the environment."

NZ Nick

When the Dept. of Tourism tout NZ as '100% Pure' they also fail to mention the fact that the Dept. of Conservation indiscriminately aerial drops 1080 to poison any mammals in an area. They have just aerial dropped within 100m of my boundary in an area where I collect my household water from. I've had to road tanker water in at great expense.
1080 remains in the carcasses of dead animals for months poisoning scavengers and the waterways.
Why is this relevant? Tesco's buy almost 50% of the lamb produced over here and none is checked for 1080 residues. Google 1080 and reduce your intake of NZ lamb, especially if you have young children!

Butterbox

"Finally we've been caught out! As a New Zealander I have been holding my head in my hands as decisions are made to help us procrastiate from doing improving our environmental performance. It is nice to see someone point this out, even if it does come from the otherside of the world.
NZ homes are terrible for insulation. However there is some good work going on to provide funding for insulation and install heat-pumps. These are perhaps a better choice than central heating in an environment where cooling is needed in the summer.
Our power generation is predominately from hydro, so at the moment this is not too bad. However, with the lack of new sites for hydro and a need for more base load on the grid we are struggling for other options to help meet our demand (my preferred answer is decrease demand/increase efficiency - but this is too hard to comprehend for some people who love their 2kW oil heater on 24hrs/day). NZ is to small to sustain a nuclear power plant so it has to really work hard to get greener options for power generation.
Although NZ does have a much older car fleet (possibly due to the cheap imports from Japan because we have a very open market) however, I would like to see the difference in Green House gases created with creating a new car from scratch (i.e. the steel production) compared with running an old on for a few more years. I feel it would be a lower amount, but that would not show up on the NZ carbon savings as we don't produce the cars.
Population density is also much lower in NZ compared with the UK (i.e. less apartments/semi-detached housing) so public transport is more costly to run - so less services are on offer and cars get used more.
These are fine excuses, some of which are due to poor planning in previous years. However, NZ politicians will continue to be scared from doing anything until the general population is aware of what how the global community feels. Some parts of the population still think that no one else is doing anything so why should they? Of course this is not true at all, the UK and Europe have been working hard on the problem for years. Unfortunately this message gets lost somewhere in between here and NZ (probably in baggage handling at LAX)...
Well done again on writting the article - hopefully it pops up in the NZ media.
 

Wellybob

The Current NZ govenrment has the view that because NZ makes up 0.3% of carbon equivilent emmissions that they can operate under the radar... Somehow they think 'responsibilty, is someone elses responsibility'.
Since gaining power last year they have:-
1- Curtailed Public Transport expenditure in favour of a new campaign of Motorway Building.
2- Dropped the previous govt's 90% renewable's energy target.
and are in the process of passing lesislation to:-
a- Allow mining/oil extraction in pristine National park area's.
b- amending the previous govt's ETS Bill so that Tax payers sholder the bulk of the burden for large polluters.
and they are planning to turn up at Copenhagen with a Pledge of a flimsy 10% reduction of GHG's on 1990 levels.
If you object to subsidising the irresponsilbe who seek to externalise the cost of climate change to you "vote with your wallet"...as a New Zealander... I ask that you boycott our products until such time as resposible government in NZ is restored.

Hieros

"I'm not surprised to see NZ has high car ownership. Public transport is a problem in a country of this size, with a small population, and lack of infrastructure. However, kiwis are in love with their cars, and the more powerful the better. Cronenberg could have mad Crash here !
NZ has in recent years identified 'leaky house syndrome'. Kiwis pride themselves on their 'No.8 wire culture', where they can make anything out of a piece of wire. It is in fact synonomous with botch-jobs in many cases, and pervades professionalism as well. Not only are houses not made well, they are not built to conserve energy."
Kiwis themselves live in the 'green mirage'. Many seem to think that the '100% PURE' Tourist Industry advertising campaign is real. Much of the countryside here is pristine, but agriculture on an industrial scale is encroaching. The only thing that is 100% pure here, is the epidemic of P!
With the No.8 culture, Kiwis think they can do anything themselves, and not only that, but that they are the best in the world at everything ! There is a lot of innovation in NZ, but there is also much macho arrogance and not much insight.

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100% Pure Myth Exposed By British Press

 A UK journalist determined to expose false environmental claims has finally blown the lid on New Zealand's 100% Pure image, and about time too. For some time the contributors to this blog have been highlighting the 100% Pure construct and how it has little, if any, basis in reality being little more than a tourism tag line that somehow found its way into the nation's collective consciousness. Fred Pearce has revealed 100% Pure to be nothing other than 100% Pure Greenwashing.

By Fred Pearce of The Guardian newspaper:

New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth, but it's no friend of the earth

"Lord of the Rings country trades on its natural beauty, but emissions have risen 22% since it signed up to Kyoto."

"As the world prepares for the Copenhagen climate negotiations next month, it is worth checking out the greenwash that has followed the promises made 12 years ago when the Kyoto protocol was signed.....my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as "clean and green".

New Zealand secured a generous Kyoto target, which simply required it not to increase its emissions greenhouse gases up by 22%, or a whopping 39% if you look at emissions from fuel burning alone between 1990 and 2010.

But the latest UN statistics show its emissions of some countries with big emissions growth started from a low figure in 1990. Arguably, they were playing catchup. There is no such excuse for New Zealand. Its emissions started high and went higher. They are today 60% higher than those of Britain, per head of population. Among industrialised nations, they are only exceeded by Canada, the US, Australia and Luxembourg. In recent years a lot of Brits have headed for Christchurch and Wellington in the hope of a green life in a country where they filmed the Lord of the Rings. But it's a green mirage.

To rub our noses in it, last year New Zealand signed up to the UN's Climate Neutral Network, a list of nations that are "laying out strategies to become carbon neutral".

But if you read the small print of what New Zealand has actually promised, it is a measly 50% in emissions by 2050 – something even the US can trump.

Where do all these emissions come from? New Zealand turns out to be mining ever more filthy brown coal to burn in its power stations. It has the world's third highest rate of car ownership. And, with more cows than people, the country's increasingly intensive agricultural sector is responsible for approaching half the greenhouse gas emissions.

You might expect the UN Environment Programme to throw New Zealand off its list of countries supposedly pledged to head for climate neutrality. Sadly no. These steely guardians of the environment meekly say that the network "will not be policed... nor will UNEP verify claims".

Indeed, it seems to go to great lengths to deny reality. Check the UNEP website and you will find an excruciating hagiography about a "climate neutral journey to Middle Earth", in which everything from the local wines to air conditioning and Air New Zealand get the greenwash treatment.
After extolling the country's green credentials, it asks: "Have you landed in a dreamland?" Well, UNEP's reporter certainly has. He cheers New Zealand's "global leadership in tackling climate change", when the country's minister in charge of climate negotiations, Tim Groser, has been busy reassuring his compatriots that "we would not try to be 'leaders' in climate change."

This is not just political spin. It is also commercial greenwash. New Zealand trades on its greenness to promote its two big industries: tourism and dairy exports. Groser says his country's access to American markets for its produce is based on its positive environmental image. The government's national marketing strategy is underpinned by a survey showing that tourism would be reduced by 68% if the country lost its prized "clean, green image", and even international purchases of its dairy products could halve.

The trouble is, on the climate change front at least, that green image increasingly defies reality."

See also blog links under the headings of :
100% Pure Myth 
100% Pure NZ - You Can't Be Half Pregnant You Have To Go All The Way, The Age Of Stupid
Pollution - both of the air and water in NZ, plus health hazards
Kaweru Mill Can Continue To Pollute River For 25 Years 
Bonn Climate Change Talks
Statistics Top 3 
1080 - tonnes of highly toxic pesticide broadcast over the countryside from helicopters
Greepeace -  and their actions against PKE importers in NZ

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