Fast-Track Consenting Bill Submission Template

The Government has proposed a new Bill that has the undue power to override almost every environmental law that has been established in Aotearoa over the past four decades. This bill will give them the power to sneak destructive development projects in through the back. The Fast-track Approvals Bill is a Minister-controlled and obscenely undemocratic piece of legislation designed to give environmentally damaging projects the go-ahead with little or no consideration of the potential long-term environmental and social impacts. The Select Committee is calling for submissions from the public, and we have until 19 April to have our say.

As advocates for food sovereignty and security, we see this Bill as a further threat to the ability of Aotearoa to sustain food-secure communities into the future. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including further degradation of the natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon, such as freshwater, healthy soils, access to land and a healthy atmosphere. We are also concerned about the limited capacity for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on projects destined for approval.

We understand that many of our members and followers will be as outraged and anxious as we are about this legislation, which the Environmental Defence Society (EDS) is calling ‘constitutionally questionable’. We have prepared a template for you to use in preparing your own submissions, whether as individuals or from your organisation/small business. We have used the submission prepared by the EDS along with information from Greenpeace, Forest and Bird, the Ministry for the Environment, and NZ scientists to inform this short submission template. 

Please feel free to copy and paste, but remember that a submission is most impactful when it speaks to your own context and specific concerns. 

Further action:

• Sign the open letter from James Shaw

• Read the EDS submission for much more in-depth content and inspiration for your own submission. They have also released a submission template.

• Listen to the webinar on the EDS submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill

Submission template

SUBMIT HERE

Submitter Details

Full name: [the name of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own name]
Address for service: [the registered address of your organisation, farm, business etc or your own address]
Contact: Name(s) of contact(s) - only necessary if you’re submitting on behalf of your organisation, farm, business etc.
Email: [contact email]

Introduction

1. [Your organisation, farm, business etc or name] thanks the Environment Select Committee for the opportunity to make a submission on the Fast-track Approvals Bill (Bill).

2. [Add a sentence about your organisation, farm, business etc or yourself here. What do you do? Where do you live? Any other context you’d like to add?]

3. [Name of your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’] strongly oppose(s) the Bill. It is clear that the aim of the Bill is to prioritise economic opportunities at any environmental cost, including the further degradation of natural resources that growers, food producers and all of us in Aotearoa depend upon for our livelihoods.

Why [Your organisation, farm, business etc or ‘I’]  oppose(s) the Bill

Here are our key points - feel free to expand upon these or list your own.

• To grow local, nutritious food for our communities, we rely upon a healthy environment. Both the global environment and te taiao (environment) of Aotearoa New Zealand are under extreme stress, with freshwater quality, biodiversity, solid health and the climate all on the decline. The Bill presents blatant and unacceptable disregard for these life-sustaining systems, with little to no consideration of environmental impact required. 

• The Bill is plainly not about speeding up the process. There may be some time savings, but by far the main impact of the Bill is to disempower the public and affected parties, and to bypass any meaningful testing of environmental effects.  

• The purpose of the Bill is completely one-sided - it only recognises regional and national benefits and not environmental effects, but it takes priority over all other considerations.

• The Bill provides only extremely limited opportunities for tangata whenua and other affected authorities and experts to provide comment on referral of projects to the fast-track pathway and then projects destined for approval. Ten working days is a completely insufficient and unreasonable time period for consultation with those who are allowed to have a say (for example, iwi authorities and local government) and there is little room for comment from groups, organisations, experts and others who will be affected by the decisions under consideration.

• The Bill provides development ministers with decision-making powers beyond those any politician should hold within parliament - it is anti-democratic and nonsensical. 

• The ministers are under no obligation to take advice from experts on the environmental impact of projects referred to the fast-track process, another mechanism restricting the opportunities for informed input.

• The Bill is inconsistent with Aotearoa New Zealand’s international obligations under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which commits us to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the Convention on Biological Diversity which commits us to conserving biodiversity. There is no requirement for considering the potential emissions of projects, which we find unacceptable for any new legislation amidst a climate crisis. 

• Furthermore, the Bill explicitly refers to “development of natural resources, including ... petroleum”, paving the way for oil and gas exploration and extraction. 

• There are insufficient criteria to exclude projects that could be environmentally detrimental. Even projects that involve prohibited activities under the RMA -the most environmentally dangerous activities in sensitive locations - and mining in national parks and marine reserves are not excluded, and the Ministers can choose to approve them regardless of the Expert Panel’s recommendations.

• The intent to favour commercial interest over community and environmental wellbeing is clear in the purpose of the Bill. We believe this will be at the detriment of the natural environment and the health of our people.

• The Bill is also inconsistent with the government’s own stated goal of evidence-based decision making (s17F of your coalition agreement).

  Concluding points

• We submit that the Bill should not be passed. A robust and inclusive discussion about RMA reform is instead needed.

• We urge you to slow the pace of all environmental law reform (including repeal of both the Natural and Built Environment Act 2023 and Spatial Planning Act 2023; proposed changes to the National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity 2023 (including ceasing implementation of new Significant Natural Areas); and replacing the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2020) to allow for proper democratic consultation and consider advice from environmental experts.

• We wish to be heard in support of our submission (you can add this if you would like to speak to the select committee kanohi-ki-te-kanohi (face-to-face) at Parliament or via video conferencing)

Summer Editorial – Land Use

Has the Covid-19 Pandemic ‘Sped Up’ Progress in Sustainable Agriculture? 

One of the main narratives that came after lockdown last year, was a grassroots push to ‘build back better’. Central Government took this on and pumped funding into green initiatives to boost the green economy. This is fantastic in New Zealand, however globally, it is hard to tell whether the pandemic has upped the pace of change, or whether it is being way-laid like other work since Covid-19 took the world by a storm. Also, does this apply to sustainable initiatives broadly, or has land use and agriculture has been a particular target.

To look into this more, we may be able to assess progress by looking at global commitments and Summits. Has sustainable agriculture been discussed as part of the solution since Covid highlighted food insecurity and inequity? 

This year, the UN Food Summit was held in New York in September. The UN’s Food Summit was a little low key in the media this year, it may have been a bit shadowed by the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow. By looking at the UN Food Summit, we may be able to assess whether work in this area is being accelerated in light of Covid-19, or whether it has been slowed due to the disruption. 

An impressive engagement process with stakeholders around the world was undertaken over the 18 months in advance, gathering ideas and research in order to inform solutions being created at the Summit. Given the work achieved in this engagement process, I would say Covid-19 has not significantly slowed down engagement work in this area. 

The Summit also focussed on ‘Prosperity’ as one of the three core areas for the Summit, identifying that agriculture has the potential to play a significant role in recovering from the pandemic, and the inequality in our food system that the pandemic has highlighted. Have a look at this page to find out more about how the UN Food Summit process was run for 2021. This also indicates that globally, Covid-19 has emphasised the need for action on the food system front.

• Prosperity, “Leading an inclusive and equitable recovery from COVID-19”: While representing a tenth of the global economy and supporting the livelihoods of over one billion people, food systems are a focus of inequality. They also hold the potential to be a powerful driver for the recovery. We need to double-down on our determination to ensure that all human beings can enjoy their fundamental human rights and prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic, social, and technological progress occurs in harmony with nature.

To those engaged in the process, and in light of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the vision of the 2030 Agenda is as relevant as ever. The urgency even greater.

Thirdly, the Summit identified ‘Action Tracks’ to be implemented following the Summit. Action Track 5, ‘Build Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stress’ specifically relates to action needed to respond to Covid 19 and prepare our food system for shocks such as pandemics. The Action Tracks also identified the need to address barriers to smallholder farmers and small-scale enterprises along the food value chain to improve environmental and social outcomes.

For these three reasons, I would say the Covid-19 global pandemic has not slowed down action in improving the current food system, or taken away from it, but rather highlighted the need to be urgent about changing it. 

However, identifying the need for the change to our food system in the Summit does not necessarily indicate real change on the ground. What were the solutions suggested? Does it include land sharing to address inequity in access to land-use? Land ownership has strongly been linked with wealth and power over history. How do we make sharing a more significant part of our economy so that we can redistribute resources and resolve inequity in land access? These days, sharing seems to be all about social media. How do we make sharing more normal in day-to-day life? This is where Village Agrarians come in. Start small, in our own region, by pairing those who would like to share their land, with those who are looking for land access. This feels like a huge win, so simple but not very commonly done. 

The UN Food Summit pulled together a long list of problems and actions. There are about 2,000 actions alone! And yes, land access has been identified as an issue causing inequity in our food system. The proposed solution is to improve local and domestic procurement processes to support local producers, and to enhance private-public partnerships to mobilise local finance to improve equity. When wanting to look further into the solution for improving land access and tenure, Solution 44: ‘Improve security of land tenure, land banking & community-based mechanisms on land rights & control over resources’, the sheet came up blank. If only Village Agrarians had been there, we would have loved to work this out with them, perhaps the work on this is still coming. 😊 You can explore the issues and solutions explored in the Summit on this page. 

Even if the solution has not quite been ironed out and put in place, it is heartening to know that it has been highlighted on a global platform as an issue that must be addressed, even in a global pandemic crisis, making it even more important to resolve.

Good News Story for Land Use -  A Grass Roots Victory

It’s always good to share great news. Australia has been heavy on the mining, but recently, a proposed mine was rejected in favour of protecting horticultural land. Kalbar Operations proposed an open cut mineral sands mine which would have had a footprint of 16.75 Km2. It would have operated for 8-15 years, and caused irreversible damage to a horticultural sector. The mine was proposed for an area in Eastern Gippsland which produces food for Victoria and New South Wales, known as one of Victoria’s most prosperous food bowls. 

A passionate grassroots group wrote submissions, banding together to fight the mining proposal, and won!

This may just be the turning of a tide. Rather than valuing an extracting, linear economy, government planning may just be changing to value long term land use, and seeing the benefits of horticulture in society.