 Kia ora, kaupapa. I'm Vincent Herringa. Welcome to this sixth episode in our series of Otato Ngahere, produced by Pure Advantage and Tanei's Tree Trust. These webisodes are being hosted by our friends at Edmund Hillary Fellowship. In today's webinar will be a webisode, in fact, we like to call it. We'll be looking at what the financial and policy incentives should be that would create an incentive for landowners to commit to permanent forests and especially indigenous forests and we're joined today by Dr David Hall, who's a senior lecturer at the School of Social Science and Public Policy at AUT and he researches climate change policy and has been a contributor especially to the Te Arawa Circles Sustainable Finance Forum. Our second guest is Annabel Chartres, a partner at PWC New Zealand and she leads their sustainability and climate change practice and has been an author also of that report into biodiversity for the Te Arawa Circles. So welcome Annabel. Our third guest is Kevin Prime, whose family has just moved something, whose family have farmed beef entries and lately bees on their whanau land in Matato in Northland since 1963 and Kevin is also a commissioner with the Environment Court. And then finally, Waho, excuse me, Waho Roy Shortland, who is the leader. He was a leader in Te Reo Māori and has agreed to sit in on our webinar with Kevin to contribute to our understanding of Te Ao Māori, particularly in regards to our Nahiri. So, you know, one of the things we've been doing with these seminars is advertising really the opportunity for the content on our website, the Pure Advantage website, which you can find at pureadvantage.org. All of the contributors to tonight's webisode have written pieces for our website and you'll find them there. And I think that Simon, you're going to put them on the chat as we go through. So they're really worth a read. And in fact, that whole website is just a treasure trove of lovely information, including a beautiful film that was made and is now playing both on the website, also on TVNZ on demand of farmer Ian Brennan, who is a really good example of someone who's converted a lot of his farm into native forest. So it's a beautiful story of a tānei's tree trust farmer at work. All right, Simon, should we have a quick look at the poll results? See who is joining us tonight. As with previous episodes, we look like we have a good mattering of people who are landowners, foresters, farmers and landowners and also science and academia and other. And also a good number of people who have engaged in the material online. So thank you for that. And there's more going on there every time you visit. And at least half of you have seen that documentary, which means half can still watch it both on TVNZ and on our website. OK, well, the question of how do we incentivise landowners to plant native trees? That really is the subject of tonight's website. And we thought we would start with a real actual live forester and farmer. So Kevin Prime has a wonderful description on his website on the website. And I would love to just read that to you. And then we're going to ask Kevin to describe a little bit of his experience with farming and forestry. But Kevin's married to Margaret. They have 13 children over 30 mokopuna and two great-grandchildren. And he says hindsight is a wonderful thing with the benefit of modern science techniques now and his knowledge of Te O Māori. He wants to correct the mistakes that have been made in the past with managing the land for the benefit of future generations. Kevin, what would you regard as some of those mistakes? And I think especially in the story you quote your grandmother with instructions about what to do with the rivers. My grandmother had said to her children, koe, koe, turaki ngā rāko i ngā taha taha o ngawai. Essentially saying to her children and some of the grandchildren were around at the time not to cut down any trees along the waterways. And I guess that didn't really happen because... ...and she also started planting trees very early. Wai, wai, wa, sikoa, nga rapa-rapa haere. Hienkai nau te korotiki ngā iwi ne, kie te meatue, koroka e ta māta utupuna e hakahūana te whānau kia haka to rākau. Na, nanu e haka to ngā rākau ngā paina ne, ngā paina mege ne o tāwahi. He's taken his leave from his grandmother. And while it was pretty broad, we had to sort of learn through the experience of becoming a forester and becoming a working farmer on the lands that have been passed down. So the other thing, I think, in addition to what Kevin's saying, is he's become a model for the rest of us in the wider Ngāti Hine forest estate. He's led us. He's been at the forefront of many of the initiatives that are in front of Ngāti Hine now. Kevin, kia hako te kōreroi te rotu i te reo and I'll pick it up as you stop. Well, why is that, Kevin? In what ways do you think you have led the charge? And what have you learned as you look back on the past and now look to the future? Well, for example, in my time when I started, I think probably going back of this, I think you said we started in 1963. We actually started about 400 years ago on our... We have occupied, we can trace occupation, 400 years to our common ancestor Hini Ahmadu. I'm happy to be stand corrected. My grandparents had planted trees. They only planted about seven acres. My dad had planted about 70 acres. Then I planted about 1,700 acres. But mine was different in that I borrowed money and all they're trying to do a lot more. What kind of trees did you plant, Kevin? Mainly pine, just rainy after that. That's for you at Casey, I'm not an oxen. But I think we've learned our mistakes now. For example, like using a roller crusher and you find that the bulldozer driver anchors his machine just over a ridge and he lets the roller crusher roll down the hill. And even though you've told him not to go down to the streams, he can't see that it's not till the ropes go slack that he knows is hit the bottom and then he winds it up. So we ended up having burns that went right down to the stream. So those are lessons that we've learnt. We've learnt now that to have buffers along your stream. So we're having 50m buffers at minimum along all our waterways. So those are some of the lessons we've learnt and we're trying to address that now. And you've also diversified the range of plants and trees that you've planted, right? Yes, that's right. Well, we're planting mainly gani kapua, which I think most of you call T3. Or somebody called it manuka, but to us manuka is another plant. It's what most of you would call kanuka, I think, of T3. So we've been planting mainly T3, but within that T3 that we're planting, we're planting pockets of natives, like when he moved kahedra pair and any other different native tree plants. Like the problem with the way we're planting them, I think we still haven't learnt how nature or God plants them is that they'll drop seeds everywhere as the plants would grow where they're supposed to grow, whereas human beings tend to plant them and just put the trees and plant them in rows and that, which I don't think is natural. There must be a lot easier way we can copy nature. Well, there's not a lot of straight lines in nature. True. Are you expecting to get a financial return from these natives that you're planting? Well, the intention is that we do hope to be clear-felling natives in probably about 250 to 300 years' time, but we think we're still going to need pine trees for another five generations of pine trees, so that's probably about five to 250 years. So because we sure want to make money, but we will be reducing the amount of pine trees that we plant every year. We hope to phase out cattle probably in the next 40 years, so that's not very far away, a lot earlier if we could, just keep enough to have a tonguey and that sort of thing. What would stop you from planting more natives? You have to make a transition, right, and you're expecting your pine trees to be harvestable. That's your expectation? Yes, eventually we would still do the normal planting regime, which is about 28, 30 years, and to gain some income, we still have to pay the rates, we still have to meet all the costs of pest control, weed control, and all the other things that happen. We still have to earn some income to generate some income to do something with it. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, it's a working farm. David, this story that Kevin has told would be repeated all over the country, and if we were ambitious, or at least our ambition was to incentivise more planting of trees and in particular more planting of native trees as this whole series is focused on, we have mechanisms to reward people for doing that, right? We have, at the very least, an emissions trading scheme that would effectively be a carbon farming model for someone like Kevin and for families like Kevin across the country. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the first mechanism, of course, is timber markets. So that was what Kevin was talking about. There's the possibility of sell timber, but then as climate change became a drive in concern, yes, we've also complemented that with the emissions trading scheme. So that is a mechanism which enables people to make money out of growing trees and sequestering carbon that is pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and storing it away in the form of forests and trees. So, yeah, it is enabling a land use which otherwise wouldn't be commercially possible because you can even plant a permanent forest and make money off that, at least while it's still growing and sequestering carbon and you don't even necessarily need to harvest trees to make that work. That's the end of the story, isn't it? Thank you very much and good night. I know that there's a but coming. And I guess the but is that people value forests and trees for a lot of different reasons and they value different sorts of forests for different reasons and the reason that we've been focused on native forests through the Ōtātunga Hedi series is that communities, Māori and Pākehā value native forests for a lot of different reasons. There's particular relationships for Māori to native species through whakapapa and the relations that they have to particular tree species. And then there's also all sorts of aesthetic values. People love native birds that live in these forests. And then, you know, there's also, as being discussed in some of the earlier webinars, there's possibilities to use some of these native species for timbers. There's potentially values that we don't even fully understand in regards to Rōngoa Māori and medicinal and other sorts of extractive purposes. And the mechanisms that we have at the moment don't necessarily value these things. And certainly the emissions trading scheme doesn't. It values carbon sequestration. So it is monetising the capacity for trees to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And so the faster the tree grows, the more money you can earn from that. And it happens that we've spent decades perfecting the pinus radiata to be an incredibly fast-growing tree for timber purposes, but that works just as well for carbon sequestration purposes. And, you know, other exotic species and native species don't grow that fast. And so they don't earn as much money through the emissions trading scheme. So, you know, the emissions trading scheme is good at what it's designed to do, which is to reward carbon sequestration. But, you know, carbon sequestration is only one aspect of the climate change problem. When we have the Paris Agreement, you know, Article 2, we're committed to climate mitigation, so we're committed to sequestering carbon, but we're also committed to climate adaptation. We need to make climate resilient landscapes. We need to prepare for extreme weather events, floods and so on. And we need to be wary of increased fire risk and risk of introduced pests, which might attack forests. And there's a question here as to whether monoculture pines or monoculture of any species, really, is the most prudent choice in regards to climate adaptation, because actually, you know, monocultures tend to be quite exposed to these sorts of risks. You know, the general rule of thumb from a resilience perspective is to have biodiversity in a forest and biodiversity in the landscape. So, that is where the emissions trading scheme may well not be producing the optimal outcomes from a climate change perspective. And then there's other questions as well around biodiversity and also just transition questions, but... So, the ETS, as it exists now, is in some ways the wrong tool to be using... to incentivise and reward landowners like Kevin's family to really advance the cause of regenerating native nahiri and planting is what you're saying. It's a clumsy instrument. Yeah, it's clumsy is what I'm saying. It's good at what it's designed to do, but it was never really intended to deliver the more nuanced approach to the landscape that people really want to see where we're not just putting the fastest growing trees across the landscape and customising carbon sequestration, but a more nuanced approach where we're interweaving different sorts of land uses and interweaving different sorts of forestry uses even within agricultural production. I mean, it tends to work in a much more siloed way the emissions trading scheme. And so, I think it's... we have to be careful because it does enable forest land uses otherwise might not have been possible, especially putting forest in remote areas where perhaps it would be too expensive to transport the timber out. And so, you know, it wouldn't get forested for timber reasons. You know, the emissions trading scheme does enable permanent forest in some of those places. And that is a good thing, but it might not necessarily be the right species for those sites. And so, it's not necessarily getting that nuance that we want with the slogan, right tree, right place and right purpose. Yeah, indeed. So, Annabelle, you're a finance guru. If the ETS is not the right instrument, or at least it's only one of what should be a range of instruments that could be used to reward people for regenerating and planting native forests. What other mechanisms could we look to? And I think in your excellent piece, you list four. I don't know if you want to rattle through those four now. I can certainly do that, Vince. I think the first thing before I do it, though, is both Kevin and David have pointed out that there's this real issue because we're facing into the need to function in economies and societies where we need cold hard cash. So, there is a need for return on investment in some way, shape or form. Well, at the same time, there's this issue with being able to value the other values or outcomes or impact that we get from, in this particular case, from native forestry, and that's where this seems to be the disconnect in what we're looking at. The other thing, of course, is what we need to do with native forestry is do it at scale. So, this is not a case of planting two trees every year. It's a case of being able to find financing instruments and mechanisms that can really turn the dial around regeneration of biodiversity and affecting some of the negative change we've made on our landscapes. So, the four instruments I wrote about are certainly not the only ones. They're just, I suppose, pretty commonly known ones. The other thing is that they're not mutually exclusive. So, there is not one size fits all, and just as the ETS is a blunt instrument that serves one purpose, it's also useful as David mentioned. It's not something that we should do away with. We need other things and better things. So, of the four that I mentioned, the first one was green bonds, which are pretty well established as a financial instrument, both in New Zealand increasingly, but also very much internationally. And in terms of what they are and the difference between them and a more traditional bond, is that they are issued to actually fund a project or investment that's going to drive a really clear environmental benefit. In terms of how that could fit with this issue we're trying to solve around native forestry, a green bond could, for example, fund seedlings or labour or maintenance of the forest. And then the issue, it just needs to evidence that the positive change that's driven out of that. So, that's one thing that could be used, and then there's the possibility with green bonds because they're really established of having formal certification in place. So, you know, with any financial instrument, with anything we look at, there has to be rigor around how the benefits are appraised or how the outcomes are appraised and that fits for both green bonds, but anything we look at. And I think A and Z were one of the first to issue green bonds in New Zealand. I seem to remember funding a geothermal facility for contact energy. Yep, that's right. Digging into my deep past as a business reporter. So, these mechanisms are quite commercial, right? We're not talking about necessarily charitable exercise. These are long-term investments by institutions. Absolutely, and there's a very, very clear commercial benefit that comes out the other side. And that's what I suppose we're facing into with native forestry in terms of defining that benefit in a way that is attractive to investors. And again, on a scale that means it's commercially viable in the market. Yes. And your right contact energy has issued green bonds. We've seen some from Auckland Council. Argusy property have done the same. Now, those have all been for different things, not for native forestry, but there's certainly a history of them being issued in New Zealand, increasingly being used as a source of funding. Yeah. The second thing that we're starting to see a little bit more, and particularly I would say this year is sustainability-linked loans. And this is where an organisation is looking to have a loan where the interest charge to the borrower and the performance of the loan is set against some predefined environmental or social governance criteria. So if they meet certain criteria, then they'll get a discount on their rate. If they don't, then the rate is higher in terms of repayments. And the agreed threshold is part of the criteria of how that loan is set up at the outset. I think the most recent one we've seen in the market in New Zealand is BNZ and Southern Pastures. They issued one couple of months ago, but Sinlay have done the same. Contact Energy again have done the same in terms of having these predefined criteria driving very specific outcomes that's going to give them a discounted rate on whatever their loan is. Why that's quite attractive is, of course, you're getting a discount on your lending and then for the banks, it's an opportunity for them to de-risk their loan book as well. So increasingly, as environmental and social and governance metrics come into play in terms of how a bank looks at its loan book, these sorts of products are going to be, I think, increasingly common in the market. And at the moment, there are great PR exercises for lots of organisations who are seeing, who want to be seen to progress in their environmental credentials in the market as much as you can. Well, I suspect that both with green, well, in fact, all three green bonds, green loans and also green funds, which I think you're going to be talking about next, is the potential for the alternative being you might be investing in a stranded asset. If you are investing as a bank or as a fund or an institution of some sort, there's a possibility your investments, whether they be fossil fuels or some sort of polluting factory or whatever or damaging practice, there is a possibility of you being stranded with this climate unfriendly investment, right? Absolutely. And the other element of that, that's sort of the negative element, is that if you are not doing environmentally or socially positive activity through the financing that you're accessing, your ability to access funding is going to become more limited. And we're already seeing, as a result of climate change, talking to banks in Australia and in parts of Europe and the UK, access to funding is getting more difficult for those organisations and sectors that have high risk, whether it's from environmental degradation or whether it's from high emissions. And I am sure we'll start to see that in New Zealand as well. Yes. Let's just touch on the third one very quickly, which... No, I won't put words in your mouth. What is the third category? Green funds. And this is a little bit different because it's, you know, it's a bucket or a portfolio of investments and what we're seeing is both negative and positive screening in terms of the investments that are going to a green fund. So choosing not to invest in certain things because of the negative externalities associated with that particular industry or company or idea, or choosing instead to use positive screening and think about impact investing around ideas, organisations, solutions that have a positive impact on the environment or society. And we're seeing more and more of that starting to happen as well. This idea of impact investing in New Zealand. Yeah, and I do carry on. I was going to say in New Zealand, still early days, but there are increasingly some impact funds starting to set up. And the idea, certainly from an investor perspective, that the negative screening goes without saying is happening all over the world. So you're seeing some of the big investment funds, the sovereign wealth funds, superannuation funds, Kiwis over here choosing to limit investment or actually reverse their investment. So disinvest from either industries or sectors or organisations that are having a negative impact or having a high emissions base. The fourth one, I know you're going to mention by diversity credits, but I'd like to just hold that thought because we'll explore that in some depth, but I wanted to ask Kevin thank you, Annabel. This pool of capital that Annabel has been talking about, have you been able, as a farmer, as a forester, as a whanau, have you been able to access any of this green capital to fund your business? No, we haven't we haven't tried any of it to date at all. I think it's been looked at. We did get an email from someone who did an assessment and said we have 300,000 odd sitting-in credits and I wasn't aware of that and we haven't tapped into it either and I don't think we wish to tap into it. Do you mean credit as in emissions trading credits? Yeah, the carbon credits. What would stop you from cashing that in? Well, I guess I think we'd have to pay back if we cut the trees down. Yes, I guess you would. I'm not paying back. Just don't go there. Yep, because your business model is still around harvesting. In SNS. Yeah. David, in your experience, the sort of wash of capital that's coming down from large institutions, is it having an effect on green investments and in particular on forestry? Have you noticed any impact yet? Well, certainly investors moving into the carbon farming space and the creation of permanent forests and pine forests, which are generating that revenue from the emissions trading scheme and producing units that might be used for offsetting internationally. But the real challenge is to steer that flow of capital and that wish to invest towards the most environmentally sound and the most socially just outcomes. And, you know, we've seen that backlash already from the investment into these sorts of forests and I think, you know, we'll see more of that investment and some of that may well be the right land use for the particular sites that they've been installed on. But, you know, I think a lot of landowners and a lot of communities are not going to want that as a large scale land use change across the whole country. And so, you know, we're going to have to pivot towards outcomes that have a better balance of, you know, what I was describing before where it's mitigation as well as adaptation, as well as biodiversity enhancements, as well as regional economic opportunities. And I this is why in a lot of my work I've been attracted to the idea of nature-based solutions. So this is an idea which is emerging in international climate change policy and strategy. And this really makes explicit that idea that we shouldn't be looking at using land use and ecosystem restoration to deliver climate mitigation alone. We should be striking that balance across multiple outcomes and using nature and using ecosystems to deliver that multifunctional outcome. Because, and just to underline the point of what you're saying, because the capital that Annabelle has talked about needs a return on investment, even if it's impact investing, it still needs a return on investment. And at the moment, unless you're harvesting trees, really the only alternative is the emissions trading scheme for returning some sort of value back to your investors, to your bank or to the buyers of your bonds. And so really what we need is another kind of mechanism, multiple mechanisms, as Annabelle has said, not mutually exclusive and that's where I suppose this idea of a biodiversity credit comes in. Tell us about these miracle drugs. I don't know if it's a miracle drug but it's certainly worth having a go at. So in terms of the instruments I talked about before, they are I suppose they are or green versions of existing financial instruments in some way, shape or form. And similarly, a biodiversity credit moves away from that traditional sort of financing product a little bit because it's trying to create a value that that represents a return on investment for an owner before they can establish another revenue stream from the forest. And so it's trying to say there is a way to incentivise people, organisations to invest in native forestry even if that initial revenue stream that you might get from other alternative sources of planting is not there to start with. So it's almost saying we'll give you a return by doing nothing and just doing the right thing so it's creating a different value structure in some respects. Appreciating that with native forestry in particular and David talked about this before looking at it from a sequestering perspective. The reality is that Pinus radiata is a much more commercially viable solution for a carbon revenue stream the native forestry particularly in the early decades of growing it with a biodiversity credit or a biodiversity payment it creates a revenue stream based on the environmental or social benefits that native forest that biodiverse forest is going to provide a head of the sequestration revenue that might come later and it certainly provides an alternative to the revenue that would come from say rotational pine and the timber that could be cut down. So the idea of course with something like this is that it's finding the source of the funding to make that payment and David can talk about this with much greater detail but you know many respects it does require the government to step in and say hey we will fund you to not chop down a tree and not to plant something that's monoculture or a mixotic species. It's saying we put a value on the biodiversity you're creating by planting natives by planting a mix of natives. We've talked about the intrinsic value of forests in their own right as having values that are beyond just timber or aesthetic in their complete sense forests that have values just by being forests is something that's a theme that's come really strongly through this whole webisode series and what you're saying is a biodiversity credit is a mechanism that would honour that and reward people for just planting and maintaining and regenerating forests for their own sake. I was going to say it's putting value on that concept of the ecosystem and it's a really really difficult thing to value but it's saying that ecosystem services deserve a value and this is one way of creating that. It's funny isn't it that we use the words ecosystem services as if they are still in service of us and it does remind me of human resources they're not people, they're human resources anyway. We're going to come back to that because that's a very interesting question looked at from an indigenous point of view but I'd like to ask David if you could just explain the mechanics of biodiversity credits how do these things work? Just to emphasise that point that you were just making actually I always find the language quite troubling around this of incentives and services. I actually think of it in terms of capabilities how do we enhance the capabilities of people of tanga defendua of all landowners to do and to deliver the sorts of outcomes that they really want to produce and to pursue those kinds of value and really appreciate from the forest and a biodiversity credit is one way. I tend to talk of it more broadly in terms of a biodiversity payment because a biodiversity credit tends to imply an offset scheme like the emissions trading scheme but that's just one possible mechanism for creating that payment and that payment is what would potentially enable people to deliver those outcomes so we already have kinds of biodiversity payment in the system already things like the one billion trees direct landowner grants were an output based payment where landowners were provided some cash which made up some of the costs of native forest establishment. There's also easement schemes like the QE2 National Trust where people are paid to retire land and essentially that's what it's doing it's creating a kind of payment for those biodiversity outcomes but I think these schemes that we have at the moment clearly aren't doing enough to address that disadvantage that native species need relative to fast growing exotics like pine trees so we really need to look at something bigger where biodiversity offsetting is one possible option but another scheme, another mechanism is outcomes based payments where landowners are paid to produce and to deliver those biodiversity outcomes in recognition of the public value that they're creating and I think I like this because restoring and protecting biodiversity on a farm, on a landscape could become part of agricultural production it could become another yield that sits alongside wool and meat and dairy and so that farmers are not just looking for those traditional agricultural outputs they're also looking to enhance their biodiversity outputs as part of their farm system an agroecological farming system and it's conceivable can I just interrupt with a thought that it's conceivable for instance if you were a Fonterra farmer that part of your payment from Fonterra would be your good practice around waterways and planting around waterways to maintain a clean, so not just a compliance exercise that comes at a cost to a farmer but it could be that that becomes part of your payment for being part of the Fonterra family. Exactly and it goes back to that issue that I started with it, these payments enhance the capabilities of farmers and landowners to undertake these activities because riparian plantings and planting up gullies and erosion prone slopes, they all cost money and most landowners and land managers would love to do more of these activities if they could but they just lack the time and the money to do so and at the larger scale a biodiversity payment like this as well could make some of those financial instruments that Annabel was talking about more viable I've looked at some of this through the Climate Innovation Lab project which is a partnership with ANZ and we've looked at things like green bonds for native trees and it's certainly possible but it would require incredibly patient investors because the returns are just that further and long coming because the native trees grow slower so it really stretches it stretches the patience of investors where you're looking at not harvesting trees and 25, 30 years like in pine plantations but 50 years will be on so that really stretches the patience of investors but if there was something like a biodiversity payment that those sorts of forests were eligible for and the pine plantations weren't then there's a bit of cash flow along the way there that would help to make that financial instrument more viable so it sounds wonderful and let's get there faster but what's the reality you both have written this piece for Te Arawa Circle it was an excellent report I don't know if you've submitted it but you published it did you get a response from industry and from government around the idea of biodiversity payments? We didn't touch so much on biodiversity payments in that particular paper it was very focused on reform of the ETS to consider natives more fully and to make amendments to the things that just were a bit creaky around creating a level playing field was a term that we talked about a lot so things like the lookup tables for natives the minimum per hectare size those sorts of things and then understanding how to address the delta between the cost of native planting versus the cost of exotics but just picking up on that question Vincent we're seeing some really encouraging signs with some of the clients we're working with at PWC some of the heavy emitters in New Zealand who are looking at the carbon pricing volatility and recognizing that because of their compliance obligations under the ETS they need to think about managing that risk because it's essentially a cost item on their balance sheet that is just going up each year what's really encouraging is that with some organizations they are taking more of a values based approach to how they're addressing this so they're looking at forestry options they have this commercial return they need to generate they need a stable and recurring carbon revenue from what they're choosing to plant if they're looking at forestry but they're also trying to understand how they can do mixed plantation how they can do permanent and how they can do a proportion of natives as well because they see that as part of the legacy of their organization and that's really really encouraging to see similarly the drylands partnership between Z Energy in New Zealand Contact and Meridian I may have got some of the players wrong but they we're looking at a mix in terms of what they've done partnerships around both exotics but also natives as well so trying to bring more natives into the mix it's not perfect because the balance is always in favour of exotics because of that high sequestration rate but more values based decisions legacy impact is coming into play which is really encouraging to see I just add Vincent that it might seem strange to think of people being paid for biodiversity but it might have seemed very strange a few decades ago to think of people being paid for carbon these systems keep changing and the system at the moment doesn't reward that but that's no reason to think that it won't now I remember even just four years ago I never talk on the idea of bonds for native forests and we were talking about some of these issues in a forest that said I've planted millions of trees in my life and the idea that government's ever going to pay for trees again is just absolute rubbish and yet within months the 1 billion trees programme had been announced and indeed the government was paying people to plant trees again and so we should just never get stuck thinking that the system that we have now is the system that we're destined to have forever these institutions these policy mechanisms are all of our creation and if they are enabling and empowering things that are of genuine human value which native forests are then I think there's a case to be made to design and create and implement them absolutely it turns out change is actually possible so thank you for that I think that's added a lot of light to the issues of funding mechanisms and capital flow and so on and as usual I've left the questions to the last nine minutes but we've got a ton of questions here and they're really good ones and actually some very practical questions for example here is a question from Keith Dark for you Kevin how are you managing your possums tests that we know just absolutely love your trees and all the birds and eggs inside them well to date we've been just doing no shooting that's all when people report they've seen a possum no they people go up and there's many of the whanau their nephews, nieces that just go up and do night shooting from the farm in the forest so it's very easy to recognise a forest that's been munched by possums and we just keep on on top of it as long as we keep on top of it yeah okay interesting there's also a question here around eucalyptus plantations again the two questions in fact about eucalyptus and one for you Annabel well actually Ann David because I know you hang around forestry types are there examples of eucalyptus being planted and harvested in a sustainable way in New Zealand? my comment on eucalyps and I'm not a tree specimen specialist so this comes from conversations with a lot of the big forestry managers is that it comes back to something David mentioned before about right tree, right place, right purpose and so with eucalyps it really depends on what variety you're planting and there are so many of them and where you're planting it as to whether it can be sustainable and also whether it can be productive in terms of being commercially viable forestry crop not my area of expertise but that's the advice that we have had when we've been dealing with the forestry managers who are looking at planting different specimens David I'd just recommend that there's groups at the School of Forestry and University of Canterbury the drylands eucalyps research team who are looking into this so I recommend tracking down their work okay thank you you've found that link Simon to there's a question but I do have a question here from Jackie Amers as well so Jackie is one of the contributors and has been on this series as well and this is probably something for you Kevin it's about continuous cover forestry you I think very early in the Kodaro you mentioned about harvesting your native forests and you talked about is have you investigated the possibility of managing by a continuous cover selective harvesting this question for you Kevin for native trees no we won't be clearfalling we'd be selective logging even when the what people call wilding pines I've no doubt that there's going to be pine trees that are growing will be growing within we'll just let them mature and cut them down and hopefully that time there'd be the technology to be able to extract them without too much damage to the remainder of the forest okay nice one there's a question here from Don Scarlett and perhaps one for you David how far away is Aotearoa from biodiversity offsets trading scheme not just an emissions carbon trading scheme but an offsets or biodiversity so there were provisions already for that under the resource management act that was a requirement that regional councils could put upon developers that they would need to undertake offsets as part of as part of their resource consents that wasn't that wasn't used as much as it might have been so so presently of course the resource management act is under review and that has certainly been an issue that was touched upon in the review is to the extent to which mechanisms like this and other sorts of other sorts of financial mechanisms might be used by regional councils in order to increase investment into ecosystem restoration it raises another question which is the anomaly of having pinus radiata and permanent forests when they really only last 80 to 90 years so she has a question about is it right that such trees would even be included in the emissions trading scheme as regarded as a permanent forest I don't know if Annabelle, it could be one for you I mean I think it's not for David The permanent forest category limiting that to forests which are made of native species or are being transitioned towards native species is certainly one policy change that might be made I recall it being one that we suggested in the Aotearoa Circle report Annabelle that is something that a change that could be made to the ETS in order to adjust that disadvantage that native forests have at the moment that they have access to that permanent forest category in a way that they presently don't have that unique advantage but yeah it also raises the issues that Matt Walsh was talking about and his forestry system New Zealand carbon farming that we are using that short life or shorter life of pine trees as a way to transition to natives over the long run whether the category includes that or not is another question which will need to be addressed by policy makers and I refer everyone who is interested in this to the previous webinar where that system is discussed. We did talk at some length about transition management from short term as short term as you can get in forestry for using exactly what Kevin is doing on his land using as a short term harvestable crop with a plan to transition and that probably is a beautiful moment for us to bring this to a conclusion and I would really like to throw back to Kevin and Waiharoa to give us some context we are so used in New Zealand to having such short term horizons but right at the beginning of the conversation Kevin you talked about trees and a forest that you expected to be continued to be harvested and lived in for your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren I think you said 450 years tell us about that vision that you have because that seems like a lot of years by usual business planning standards so I guess it does sound a lot of years but the intent is still to look to help the future generations I don't think we can do much in the long term but we can plan for it and if we work towards doing something now like we're thinking more about the water quality we're thinking more about trees like nut trees fruit trees rungua trees to have all these these different options tako hi he he ne hona kia putakone paingana monga monga uri kei te heke mai kau kei hi he ne me haka toh hei mahi moni hei ahai hei paingana monga te tai awa hei paingana monga I just picking up from where Kevin has just been the Ngati Hina experience in forestry began a short period ago if you're flying into Keri Keri any day and you just before you land you will see the clear forest the pine forest that have just been clear that's 40 years of pine forest in Ngati Hina before that we had no pine and now the first harvest you can see it it's there and now we've got through the billion trees thing we have a partner in the crown to deal with what you're looking at or the replacement of that now from tonight's conversation it's really now given me a far better view of what we actually have we've got 80 years of transition because we've got a patient investor in the crown and now if we're really looking at this transition thing and all of the things that have been discussed this evening the four points Annabelle that you've raised just gives us a better sight as to what the outcomes might be if we can now focus our whole transition on the next 80 years while the crown is carrying the weight but the and this last 40 years Ngati Hina has watched trees grow on our lands on five and a half thousand hectares of Ngati Hina land and of that we only harvested 400 hectares for our benefit the rest of the trees were owned by somebody else and we have just watched it being tracked down this is our this was supposed to be our economic saving but the other 5000 hectares was tracked down by someone else and our shareholders have not had one cent dividend in 40 years and we were basically forced into forestry because our lands were said to be unproductive and here's something that's going to make them produce and they certainly did it said that we didn't see any of that economic benefit save 400 hectares and now you know everybody else Carla Halls and everybody else who grew the forest and pay it you know to be fair they paid us the lease for the land and all we did was lease for 40 years and then we paid all that in rates and what have you because we still own the land but so our experience when I was listening to all of this it just shapes my mind as to what is ahead of me as a trustee for those lands in the next 80 years I'm not going to be there to see the end result but I'm going to be there now to make sure that all of these things we talked about tonight are given why the conversation gets really much more in depth and I'm thankful I hooked up tonight because it's broadened my thinking well we're thankful but I'm going to do it for the forester as a trustee in advancing the Ngati Hinerpai so that's going to change we crushed 5000 hectares of bush basically to grow pines that's what we did to our estate in the last 40 years 80 years is not going to put it right but I think as Kevin has pointed out we can start a scheme that returns the balance now 80 years is not going to get us all the way down but hey while I've got a patient investor I'm going to certainly be milking the opportunity I'm not milking the government, milking the opportunity to do something that's going to be far more effective than the last 40 years Kia ora that was really interesting to hear and gosh we could do another whole episode on colonialism all over again when it comes to forestry because we continue to get it wrong with ecosystem services even that is questionable language this language around poor land or marginal land is a term that has been discussed on these webinars as well as inappropriate I hate that word but it's the wrong language to use about land so it could be returned to our beautiful Nahiri look we don't have time unfortunately to continue this kōrero but it's been really interesting and I'm really grateful for your time, for all of you David Annabelle, Waharoe and Kevin really interesting discussion so much more to learn Simon we've got tons of stuff happening on the chat so keep going and I'm grateful for you for all of you joining us tonight to talk about these really important matters for New Zealand so thank you for your time and thank you to our panellists