On 26 March 2019, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) released a report on “Farms, forests and fossil fuels: The next great landscape transformation?” It looks at the challenges in decarbonising New Zealand’s economy and asks whether a fundamental restructure of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) will be needed.
The PCE usefully reinforces three important points: targets and policies should reflect differences across greenhouse gases (GHGs), fossil carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions need to reach zero during this century, and management of New Zealand’s land sector would be enhanced by a landscape approach that integrates climate change and other considerations.
