April 29, 2016
Government climate fraud tolerance a toll on Maori
A Maori climate change campaigner says the Government’s failure to stop New Zealand companies including state owned enterprises buying fraudulent carbon credits has cost Maori forest owners hundreds of millions of dollars.
Proportional to its emissions, New Zealand was the largest purchaser of Ukrainian and Russian credits which did not represent true emissions reductions.
That crashed the price of New Zealand units, including those held by Maori forest owners.
Mike Smith from Greenpeace says it meant the Government has claimed it’s fulfilling its international obligations even though emissions of greenhouse gasses continue to rise.
"It’s obviously not moving in the right direction. We've got Paula Bennett going off to Paris to sign the climate change agreement and at the same time they're opening up our country to fossil fuel extraction, so there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, they appear to be doing things, but what they are doing is pretty much useless and in the meantime climate change just keeps ramping up," he says.
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