Budget: Forest planting efforts 'failing' NZ climate targets

The Budget "fails to prepare" for the scale of tree-planting needed for New Zealand to meet its Paris Agreement commitments on climate change, a forestry owners group says. Photo / File

The Budget "fails to prepare" for the scale of tree-planting needed for New Zealand to meet its Paris Agreement commitments on climate change, a national forestry owners group says.

Among the Government's climate-related spending this year is $19.5m for the Afforestation Grants Scheme (AGS), designed to encourage the planting of more forestry to help lock up atmospheric carbon.

Earlier this week, the Government announced another 5.5 million trees would be planted this winter.

But the Forestry Owners Association today said the AGS "just scratches the surface" of what was needed.

"There is plenty of private money, both within New Zealand and offshore that would invest in tree planting if the policies impacting on land use and land values were to put forestry on a level playing field with pastoral agriculture," the group's president, Peter Clark, said.

Forestry and timber processing could benefit from a further cash injection for the railway network, funds for primary industry research and a boost in trade access resources, he said.

But Clark could not see any priority given to the recruitment and training of workers in the primary industries, including forestry.

"Just a year ago the Government launched its Primary Industry Champions scheme as a major project. Now, it seems to have lost momentum.

"In forestry, we have an acute labour shortage that is only going to get worse unless something major is done, and that applies right through most of the primary sector."

Other climate spending in the Budget included $31m on research into understanding climate change, $20m for agricultural greenhouse gas research, $24m over four years for the Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund and $4m over four years to assist with policy work to meet its Paris Agreement 2030 emissions targets.

Environment groups have hit out at the Budget's climate allocations.

"The $4m announced for climate change mitigation is less than $1 per person over four years," WWF-New Zealand campaigner David Tong said.

"Meanwhile, the last figures that government released showed that they subsidise fossil fuels to the tune of $40m per year - 10 times what they're spending on climate action over four years."