NZ’s hypocritical stance on Brazil’s Amazon fires
New Zealand was quick to voice its concern at the devastating forest fires in Brazil, although we might just have easily sent our praise. After all, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s policy of allowing vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest to be cleared and converted to pasture is an economic development strategy New Zealand pioneered.
Both Ma¯ ori and Pa¯ keha¯ cleared native forest before and after colonisation. Before humans arrived in New Zealand, forest covered more than 80 per cent of the country. By the time serious European settlement began in 1840, 6.7 million hectares of forest had been destroyed. Between 1840 and 2000, another 8m ha were cleared, reducing our forest cover to a fraction of its former self.
Bush clearing allowed New Zealand to grow rich – with agricultural exports quickly growing to dominate the economy. Exports from this productive land were worth $34 billion in 2018, 3.2 per cent of the economy. With that in mind, Bolsonaro is quite right to view the consternation expressed by countries like ours as little more than hypocritical pearlclutching. Brazil’s GDP per head is less than a quarter of our own.
So does New Zealand really have any right to demand other countries reject the path to riches that served us so well? The current Government wants to lead on climate change, but critics note that New Zealand is responsible for less than 1 per cent of global emissions. Climate Change Minister James Shaw is fond of responding that 24 per cent of global emissions come from countries that each emit less than 1 per cent. The idea is that by leading on climate change, New Zealand will have the moral authority to ask countries like Brazil to stick to their commitments too. But aspiring to moral leadership is much easier for a developed, wealthy country. It’s hard to grow green.
National takes a different view. Former climate change spokesman Todd Muller wanted to see the primary industries continue to reduce their emissions, while still selling produce to the world. Our primary industries may be fairly dirty, but they’re cleaner than almost anyone else’s. If people around the world are still going to eat cheese and give their babies formula – it might as well be ours.
Again there’s a problem. This strategy gives New Zealand plenty of opportunities to continue to enrich itself through agricultural exports, essentially telling poorer countries the best way to fight climate change is to buy Kiwi-made.
The need for rich countries to help poor countries reduce emissions has been well gazetted, but few plans offer countries the opportunity to develop sustainably. Even the most generous wealthy countries play a miserly game on this score.
Outraged at Brazil’s fires, Norway halted contributions to its Amazon Fund, after donating US$1.2 billion ($1.89b) over the last decade. It was by far the largest donor to a fund aimed at encouraging projects preserving the Amazon. But its donations paled in comparison to the US$78.5b earned in 2018 by Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil company. Well-meaning Norway clearly values the Amazon, just a fraction as much as it values its oil revenue.
Deforestation and forest degradation account for about 17 per cent of emissions worldwide. Keeping the Amazon green is one of the most important things any country could do to fight climate change: its forest are often called ‘‘the lungs of the world’’. The problem at the moment is Brazil has almost no short-term incentive to keep the rainforest intact, and almost every reason to convert every available acre to productive use.
If developed countries really wanted Brazil to go green, they might be inclined to offer the country something green themselves: cold hard cash. At the moment, there are precious few opportunities for Brazil to actually earn money by leaving the forest as it is, or reforesting areas brought into production. But it could be done by allowing more carbon credits to be traded between different countries’ emissions trading schemes (ETS).
New Zealand banned international carbon credits in 2015, after concerns that those purchased by New Zealand companies to offset emissions were fraudulent. International schemes also went out of favour because they can provide little incentive for countries to reduce their emissions, as it becomes easier to purchase an international credit to cheaply offset domestic pollution.
But some schemes are giving the issue another look. This week, California’s Air Resources Board is examining a scheme that would partially bring Brazil into its ETS through something called the Tropical Forest Standard (TFS). It allows Californian emissions to be offset by overseas projects that meet a certain standard. The standard is high: Brazil would only get extra carbon credits for any additional forest it protected or replanted, and indigenous communities would have to give permission for their lands to enter the scheme. That means less incentive for Californian polluters to reduce their emissions, but harnesses the economic principle of comparative advantage: rewarding California for high-emitting exports, whilst also rewarding Brazil for its all-important rainforests.
The reported it could reap billions of dollars for Brazil, a much stronger reason to keep the Amazon alive than mere good intentions and platitudes.
Bolsonaro is quite right to view the consternation expressed by countries like ours as little more than hypocritical pearlclutching.