With this controversial proposal, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wants to fight climate change.
New Zealand on Tuesday unveiled plans to tax greenhouse gas emissions from farm animals, as part of a controversial proposal to tackle climate change. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the tax would be the first of its kind in the world.
The gases naturally emitted by New Zealand’s 6.2 million cows are among the country’s biggest environmental problems. Under the scheme, farmers pay for their animals’ gaseous emissions, such as methane from cows’ farts and burps, and nitrous oxide from cattle urine.
Jacinda Ardern told farmers they should be able to get their money back, by raising the prices of their climate-friendly produce. She said that this “realistic proposalwould reduce agricultural emissions while making products more environmentally friendly, thus strengthening the “export markfrom New Zealand.
Loss of rural vote
The government hopes to have its project signed by next year and the tax could be introduced in three years. But with elections slated for fifteen months in New Zealand, the scheme could cost Jacinda Ardern rural ballots, as farmers have been quick to condemn the scheme. Andrew Hoggard, chairman of the Federated Farmers lobby, said the project “would tear the guts out of small town New Zealand“. The tax, he said, could incentivize farmers to grow trees on fields currently used for livestock.
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The organization “Beef + Lamb New Zealandwhich represents the country’s sheep and cattle farmers, said the project does not take into account the rural measures already in place to combat greenhouse gases. “New Zealand farmers have more than 1.4 million hectares of primeval forest on their carbon-absorbing land“, underlined its president Andrew Morrison.