Budget Delivers Nothing But Loose Change For Climate Crisis – Greenpeace

Responding to Budget 2021, Greenpeace is calling the Government out for “kicking the can down the road again on climate action at a time when both the opportunity and the need for real action has never been greater.”

“Today’s Budget announcement offers little more than loose change for tackling the climate crisis. It’s incredibly frustrating to watch this Government continue a slow and incremental approach to dealing with what is a major and urgent crisis. Winning slowly on climate change is the same as losing,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Amanda Larsson

“The $1.3 billion set aside for improving rail is good news, but the Government is really missing in action when it comes to dealing with New Zealand’s biggest climate polluter – intensive dairying. What’s needed is a sizeable investment in support for farmers to transition to regenerative farming practices.”

Greenpeace has called for a $1 billion investment which would include things like building the necessary infrastructure, for example new plant-based food factories and compost plants, and providing grant funding for farmers to take up regenerative techniques like agroforestry.

Greenpeace’s oceans campaigner Jessica Desmond says that “anything meaningful for the marine environment is also sorely missing from the budget.”

“With 90 percent of seabirds and 22 percent of marine mammals threatened or at risk of extinction and the ocean under increasing pressure from pollution, climate change and overfishing, the Government should be investing to turn things around now.

“Small change has been given to the cameras on boats programme in the Budget, but it falls well short of getting cameras on 100% of the commercial fishing fleet, something over 20,000 New Zealanders are calling for.

“Commercial fishing is the single greatest risk to the ocean. If we’re serious about protecting it, we need transparency around this industry – and that looks like cameras on all fishing boats,” she says.

“New Zealanders have been waiting for this programme for years. This was the government’s opportunity to ensure it finally gets delivered this term, and they missed it.”