An ambitious vision for rewilding New Zealand

Could Aotearoa restore 8% of its land to create enduring indigenous forest carbon sinks?

Kia ora, welcome to Future Proof brought to you by AMP. I’m Ellen, thanks for joining me this week.

Native forests cover about 29% of New Zealand’s landmass, but once extended across as much as 85% of the country. A new proposal to “recloak” Papatūānuku by restoring 2.1 million hectares to healthy indigenous forest over 10 years seeks to create an “enduring carbon sink” that boosts biodiversity and enhances landscape resilience at the same time.

Launched to a global audience at Cop28 earlier this week, Recloaking Papatūānuku is an initiative spearheaded by Pure Advantage, a green growth organisation, and Tāne’s Tree Trust, supported by a raft of signatories.

The proposal suggests rewilding across a range of different types of public and private land – excluding productive cropland or other areas unsuited to native forest. Marginal high country and Crown land could be naturally reverted, while areas with existing protection or low productivity that lack bush cover could be actively replanted. All these trees could then suck up and store planet-heating carbon.

“It’s not a substitute for urgent and deep cuts to gross emissions,” Pure Advantage executive director Simon Millar said at Cop28. “The reality is that we need both, at scale and fast.”

This ambitious effort could sequester approximately 300 million tonnes of carbon over the next 30 years, or up to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2100, the proposal estimates. The latter is about 20 times New Zealand’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.

However, it takes time for trees to grow. This means that planting trees now would only make a small dent in New Zealand’s nearest emissions reduction targets in 2030. Andrew Grant, Pure Advantage trustee from McKinsey, said that the initial “heavy lifting” would come from enhancement of existing forests. “Pest control is going to be a big part of that in the short term. it's very, very confronting how much of biomass is being consumed by pests, particularly ungulates,” he said. Recent research has highlighted the impact of forest-munching animals like deer, which affect the forest’s ability to store carbon and regenerate.

Former climate change minister James Shaw called the plan “awesome”. He said it could make a “colossal difference” to longer term climate targets. “When those trees are growing to maturity, that could be the difference between having to buy offshore credits or not. And that’s massive for us,” he said.

Millar points out that the plan is not just about carbon, but delivers benefits for biodiversity and helps ensure the landscape is resilient in the face of extreme weather events. It’s also a boost to New Zealand’s global reputation. “For a nation that trades on the authenticity of its clean, green credentials, we see Recloaking Papatūānuku as a critical investment in our natural infrastructure to repair and grow our natural capital,” he said.

The plan would cost up to $12 billion to implement up to 2050. But this is cheaper than the estimated costs of this year’s flood and cyclone damage (up to $14 billion), and could be achieved at only half the cost per tonne of carbon removed compared to buying international offsets later down the track, the proposal argues.

To be successful, the nationwide effort would need community mobilisation – and the financial backing of the government. Climate change minister Simon Watts said the idea is “an exciting opportunity” and that he is committed to “start discussions with other ministers” about it.

Dame Anne Salmond, one of Pure Advantage’s trustees, said that Recloaking Papatūānuku is practical, achievable and backed by “very rigorous analysis”. But it’s also “a big beautiful idea we can work on together,” she said. “I think our country desperately needs this kind of project at the moment. One that unites us and gives us hope and pride.

“We need to do our best for our children and our grandchildren and take care of our beautiful land.”

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Climate Change Commission advice at odds with government direction

The Climate Change Commission has released its advice on how New Zealand can cut emissions between 2026 and 2030, and it makes for “awkward reading”, Newsroom’s Marc Daalder reports. The advice is based on policy pre-election, which includes initiatives set to be rolled back, and makes suggestions that are “at odds with political commitments of the new National-led government,” Olivia Wannan writes for Stuff. The 384-page report outlines a comprehensive “roadmap” for how New Zealand could stay within its emissions budget across 2026 to 2030, and meet its climate targets. Climate change minister Simon Watts welcomed the advice in a statement. The government doesn’t have to take the advice, but does have to compile New Zealand’s second emissions reduction plan by the end of 2024.

No fossil fuel ‘phase-out’ in draft Cop28 text

“The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant,” said John Silk, the minister of natural resources from the Pacific nation. His comment comes as the draft Cop28 agreement text is revealed, and it very much leaves cutting fossil fuel production and consumption as optional. The chair of the Alliance of Small Island States similarly called the agreement draft “a death certificate”. “The failure of the COP28 draft agreement to explicitly incorporate a phasing out of fossil fuels is a decision to ignore the science. This will have catastrophic implications for climate-vulnerable communities and species,” said professor Samantha Hepburn from Deakin University. The summit has run overtime as countries continue to negotiate the final wording of the agreement.

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More stories

• “The idea that we can offset the harm of intensive infrastructure by transferring carbon credits from one side of the ledger to another is a climate fairytale,” writes Nadine Anne Hura, in an essay on what’s crushed when we build roads.

• A team of researchers is searching for native pekapeka-tou-roa long-tailed bats in South Auckland so they can better protect them. Asia Martusia-King tags along on a bat hunt.

• Overturning the offshore oil and gas ban is a fool’s errand, writes Danny Rood on The Spinoff.

• An interactive from BBC shows whether countries (including New Zealand) are on track to deliver emissions reduction targets, visualising the gaps between current trajectories, pledges, and what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5°C.

• Greenhouse gas emissions from megayachts are mind-boggling. Should we ban them?

• “We call it our national adaptation plan, but it is really our survival plan”: Inside the Marshall Islands’ US$35 billion plan to survive climate change.

• Ancient DNA research upends what we know about takahē evolution.

• How much carbon are protected areas storing? A lot, according to a new NASA space sensor.

Spinetail devil ray. Image credit: Julien Renoult via iNaturalist CC BY 4.0.

Have you seen this ray? The Department of Conservation is seeking sightings of rare and protected fish species this summer, including manta rays, spinetail devil rays, and great white sharks. “The basking shark, for example, has hardly been seen in our waters since the late 1990s. I’d be thrilled to get a report of one,” says marine technical advisor Clinton Duffy. I’ll be enjoying some time in the ocean over the next few weeks – this is the last edition of Future Proof for 2023. I’ll be back in your inbox mid-January with more environmental and climate news. Have a lovely holiday break!

Fingers crossed for rays (and rays of sunshine),

Ellen

Got some feedback about Future Proof or topics you’d like covered? Get in touch with me at futureproof@thespinoff.co.nz