The Green Party welcomes Environment Canterbury’s decision today to carry a motion declaring a nitrate emergency, and is calling on the Government to take responsibility for the crisis its own policies have fuelled.

The Green Party says the Government’s newly announced Biodiversity Credit scheme is a tiny positive that doesn’t undo the biodiversity harm caused by the Luxon Government.

The Green Party was appalled to hear Prime Minister Christopher Luxon claim we are “doing everything we can” on climate change, while his government does nothing to address emissions in our most polluting sector. 

The Government has once again kicked the climate action can down the road by removing agricultural emissions from the Emissions Trading Scheme. 

Only the Green Party has a plan to reduce agricultural emissions at the scale and pace needed. The Labour Cabinet’s plan for pricing agriculture emissions announced today falls short.

Following decades of work by the Green Party alongside the organics sector, people will finally be able to be confident that products labelled organic have met standards.

Evidence shows that relying on offsets to reduce agriculture’s impact on the climate will not work, the Green Party says.

Minister O’Connor should immediately pause the Government’s proposed Fonterra Bill and review its potential impact on the climate, the Green Party says. 

Cutting climate pollution must be the number one priority for Cabinet when considering how it intends to price agricultural emissions, the Green Party says.