NZ Carbon Sink: Ngai Tahu Seeking $120m For ETS Impact On Forest Values
October 14th, 2009
Environment Minister Nick Smith has given the clearest steer yet on the details of the deal with the Maori Party over treatment of Treaty of Waitangi settlement assets whose value is affected by the imposition of the ETS. Smith says Ngai Tahu has valued the impact of the ETS on South Island forests from its 1998 land claims settlement at $120m, while the Crown believes $40m is closer to the mark. The compensation is triggered because the Ngai Tahu forests were valued on the basis of their value if converted to pastoral farming, especially dairying.
Forests in more recent deals, such as the “Treelords” deal involving several central North Island iwi, anticipated the impact of an ETS and took a different valuation approach. As a result, there appears to be no compensation in the offing for CNI iwi, a fact which has not previously been clear after the National and Maori Parties stitched together a political arrangement allowing amended ETS legislation to be introduced in time for passage before the Copenhagen global climate change summit, which starts on December 7. Whether or not this is as good a deal as the Maori Party would have liked is unknown. Once again, however, the novice party appears to have done a deal which could probably have been done anyway and handed the Govt a political lifeline when talks with Labour hit an impasse over the treatment of agriculture under an intensity-based free allocation model.
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