The Green Party will support a viable, innovative and stable forestry industry and ensure plantation forests are managed and harvested in alignment with biodiversity, carbon, pest eradication and cultural values and goals, while honouring all Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations. We will protect, maintain and increase native forests, and contribute to the sustainable management of the world’s forests.
Vision
Aotearoa New Zealand has large areas of land in healthy, productive, sustainably managed forests, which contain a diversity of species, both indigenous and exotic.
Values and Principles
- Honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi: The values and tino rangatiratanga of hapū and iwi to determine what is best for forests, the forestry industry and Māori forestry workers in Aotearoa New Zealand should be upheld. This includes returning existing forestry land to hapū and iwi.
- Ecological Wisdom: Native forests should be protected and maintained, and most commercially-harvested forest should be in diverse and indigenous species and integrated with other land uses. Soil, water and associated dependent indigenous ecosystems should be protected.
- Social Responsibility: The cultural, spiritual, ecological, and recreational values New Zealanders derive from our forests should be protected and maintained.
- Appropriate Decision-Making: Forestry should seek to place the right tree in the right place at the right time. Mātauranga Māori should be a leading contributor to forest science and the conservation of forests nationwide. The decision-making of hapū and iwi as outlined in Matike Mai should be celebrated, and relied upon when making decisions about Aotearoa New Zealand forestry.
- Non-Violence: Permanent protection forests of indigenous trees (especially on erosion-prone land), shelterbelts, and shade trees should be an integral and valued part of farming operations and the rural landscape.
- Resilience: The forestry industry should be viable, innovative and stable with diverse commercially-harvested forests managed and harvested on a sustainable basis. Indigenous forestry should be valued as, and supported to be, a sustainable pathway forward, by all land owners.
- International leadership: Aotearoa New Zealand should be a world leader in sustainable management of its forests and play a key role in promoting the sustainability and protection of indigenous forests, and the leadership of Indigenous peoples in forest conservation and management, around the world.
Strategic Priorities
The Green Party’s strategic goals include:
“...regenerative practices in all areas of economic activity, including land use and food production, will predominate.”
Actions in this policy that work towards this goal include:
- Provide greater opportunities for communities to create new areas of woodlots and forest reserves for soil and water conservation, recreation and biodiversity. (3.4)
- Work with industry to have at least 30% of the plantation forestry portfolio in superior high value species. (4.1)
- Enable developing countries to protect their forests by actively advocating, in international forums on forestry and on climate change, for the establishment of a compensation and development fund, resourced by developed countries (...) (5.3)
Connected Policies
See also our Conservation Policy, which contains detailed policies relating to protecting the conservation values of publicly owned indigenous forests. This policy is also linked closely with our Environmental Protection and Energy Policies.
