Recloaking Papatūānuku: 'In 10 years it will be too late'

A new kaupapa aims to plant, enhance, and restore indigenous forests across Aotearoa, opening the way for more of the country to look like the Raukūmara Ranges. Picture by Matai O’Connor

Recloaking Papatūānuku, a call to action to save our land, is to be presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai this month. It began here in Tairāwhiti. Kaupapa Māori reporter Matai O’Connor gets behind the story. 

A new initiative underpinned by mātauranga Māori and with a connection to Tairāwhiti aims to restore, enhance and plant 2.1 million hectares of diverse indigenous forest across Aotearoa New Zealand.

The Recloaking Papatūānuku initiative was announced on Tuesday. It will be presented to the world at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) 2028 in Dubai this month.

It grew out of the Tairāwhiti community flax roots initiative Recloaking the Whenua, a four-day event that focused on discussions about permanent native regeneration for the whenua, in September last year.

It was divided into five sessions, with 20 speakers. Discussions were about local and national plans for the conversion to indigenous forestry and regulations and policy that governed them.

Carbon farming, commercial opportunities,  and the economic and socio-cultural wellbeing of native forests were some of the other ideas that were debated.

Recloaking Papatūānuku is backed by a wide range of cross-industry leaders, including Tairāwhiti environmentalists Manu Caddie, Sam Gibson, and Dame Anne Salmond, along with others like Sir Stephen Tindall, Tracey Tangihaere, Rangi Ahipene and Rob Morrison.

It is being led by Pure Advantage, a registered charity led by business leaders and supported by a collective of researchers and writers who investigate and promote opportunities for New Zealand’s potential for green growth.

Sam Gibson, a bushman and conservationist who helped lead the recovery in the heavily impacted Waimatā catchment after Cyclone Gabrielle, says it has never been clearer that the lands, rivers and oceans cannot sustain the high level of rotation forestry and deforestation.

“We urgently need legislative change to transform our landscapes from monocultures to native forests. We urgently need a business model to bring about this shift. Now is the time — in ten years it will be too late,” he said.

Aotearoa is facing a climate and biodiversity crisis with a number of interlinked ecological challenges.

“Because of the inequities that exist for us as Māori in New Zealand society, we are suffering disproportionately from climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation,” said Rangi Ahipene, Recloaking Papatūānuku cultural adviser. “Our whenua, marae, our wahi tapu, our kai, our kāinga and our oranga are increasingly being impacted.”

Dame Anne Salmond was in Tairāwhiti last weekend and witnessed the slash and woody debris coming down the Waimatā River and piling up around bridges and landing on the beaches that were recently cleaned.

“The impacts of climate change are ongoing and devastating,” she said. Cyclones Hale and Gabrielle were a body blow to our region and the community is still reeling,” she said.

“If Tairāwhiti’s steep erodible hillsides, gullies and riverbanks had been cloaked in indigenous forest a lot of this devastation could have been avoided.

“Land Care satellite imagery after the cyclones showed that land in indigenous forest held together 10 times better than land that was bare and harvested, and five times better than land under pine plantations.”

She says New Zealand’s “clean green image”, which is so vital for tourism and markets for primary produce, is being squandered because of a lack of action on climate change.

“Rather than weeping at the wailing wall of climate change, we need to do something about it.

“Indigenous forest is something we can do. We can stand tall and restore national pride. We need it because it’s an investment in the future and one that we cannot not afford to make.

“I think our country desperately needs this project, one that unites us and gives us hope and pride.”

Climate change is exacerbating all of these challenges, and creating new ones.

Guided by science-based research, mātauranga and te ao Māori (indigenous knowledge, values and wisdom), Recloaking Papatūānuku is an ambitious but cost-effective and achievable nature-based solution designed to address these interrelated issues together.

Recloaking Papatūānuku is not a substitute for urgent and deep gross emissions reductions but rather it recognises that enduring, high-integrity, co-beneficial carbon sequestration and storage will be needed alongside those reductions to draw down historical and hard-to-abate emissions.

The report states there are multiple benefits for Māori.

These include —

■ Relief from political pressure on Māori through the Significant Natural Area policy due to more land becoming sanctuaries for biodiversity.

■ Income guaranteed by government and employment opportunities with propagation, planting, forest maintenance and protection.

■ Eco-business opportunities and bio-ceutical and pharmaceutical business opportunities based on sustainable indigenous flora harvesting.

■ Return and protection of indigenous taonga fauna species.

■ Mitigation of negative climate change impacts such as slips, eroding land, slash displacement, flooding, and property damage.

■ Improved international brand for Aotearoa New Zealand that can enhance the international market position of Māori landowner produce.

Sustainable land use advocate Manu Caddie says the Recloaking Papatūānuku proposal is a common sense solution to a number of complex problems.

“The potential of this truly transformational initiative will provide a legacy for everyone in Aotearoa to be proud of at a community level and on the global stage as a world-leading example of commitments to indigenous values and biodiversity restoration,” says Caddie.

Based on carbon sequestration opportunities alone, Recloaking Papatūānuku would support Aotearoa’s future Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) under the Paris Agreement at an average abatement cost of about $32/TCO2, which is significantly lower than the average abatement cost of international offsets, which are currently priced around $60TCO2.

Treasury estimates Aotearoa could spend up to $24 billion on international offsets to meet its first NDC, the period for which ends in 2030.

The costs associated with the changing climate extend far beyond carbon offsets. Treasury estimates the costs of Cyclone Gabrielle and the 2023 Auckland floods were between $9 billion and $14.5 billion. The fiscal impacts from increasingly frequent and severe weather events will continue to be significant, impacting agriculture, horticulture, fisheries, forestry, and tourism.

By way of comparison, the total expected cost of Recloaking Papatūānuku is in the region of $8.5 billion to $12 billion by 2050 through a 10-year planting programme starting in 2024 with ongoing maintenance and predator control between 2024 and 2050.

The initiative is expected to capture $1500 million TCO2 between 2024 and 2100, the equivalent of approximately 20 years’ worth of New Zealand’s current emissions.

Pure Advantage chair Rob Morrison says this is likely to be in excess of what will be needed to meet Aotearoa’s future NDCs and therefore could provide investment opportunities in international carbon markets for high-integrity offsets.

“We have an incredible opportunity to embrace the benefits of Recloaking Papatūānuku and position Aotearoa as a world leader. This can be an intergenerational legacy for future generations and all living things. This is a long-term programme that needs immediate action.

“For now, Recloaking Papatūānuku is an idea that has been thoroughly researched and analysed by some of the brightest minds in the country. It’s a seed that needs to be cared for and nurtured into a mighty kauri. The new government has an opportunity to embrace it and make it part of their lasting legacy, leading Aotearoa to a brighter future,” said Morrison.

The Recloaking Papatūānuku programme could be structured under one of three policy options:

Full Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) inclusion: Landowners receive Crown financing to reforest. Landowners own ETS revenue and use part of it to repay Crown loans.

Hybrid model: Landowners get an upfront grant for reforestation, sharing costs with the Crown. They use ETS income or carbon credit sales, sharing revenues with the Crown, which has a right of first refusal.

Crown funded: A combination of repurposed Nationally Determined Contributions and private funding will drive the reforestation, getting carbon credits in return. Crown covers all upfront costs, and landowners receive a yearly incentive payment to support land use change.

Morrison says the charity sees the third option as the most beneficial.

“Further work is already under way to break down the incentive design, policy evaluation, market development and implementation planning.”

Pure Advantage and Tane’s Tree Trust, with a growing alliance of signatories, including mana whenua groups with their ancestral connections to the land and knowledge and perspectives rooted in te ao Maori, are calling on the Government, businesses, local communities, and every person in Aotearoa New Zealand to support and commit to this urgent and ambitious national indigenous reforestation and restoration initiative.