Harris+2019+Oral Submission to Environment Select Committee
Channel: Graham Harris
Date: 17/08/2019

Graham Harris making an oral submission to the New Zealand Parliament, Environment Select Committee, proposing changes to the Zero Carbon Bill currently before Parliament to remove inadvertent barriers to farming seaweed, seaweed aquaculture, marine permaculture in NZ Territorial Waters and Exclusive Economic Zone

Despite planting over 10,000 native trees myself, I do not believe that we can plant enough of the right trees to meet our Paris Agreement objectives. 
I provided analysis showing that forestry sequesters too little carbon for too short a time.
We must encourage other ways to absorb Carbon Dioxide, which the current Bill excludes.
Minor changes to this Bill could provide that encouragement at very slight cost to the taxpayer and none to our productive sectors. 
The Clinical Trials sector is a model how good regulation and a Hub can make New Zealand the place investors can come to pilot their products, bringing economic and health benefits. 
Our EEZ is overlooked, and holds out great promise for sequestering lots of carbon for a long time as a by-product of a profitable offshore seaweed farming industry.
Seaweed farming can absorb a similar amount of CO2 per area to exotic forestry, but would sequester much of it through existing natural processes. 
The 410 million hectares of ocean within in our EEZ offer a potential scale for seaweed farming to sequester Carbon Dioxide well beyond what is possible by forestry.
The resource is all around our islands, and cultivating it would bring income to every harbour and manufacturing area in New Zealand. 
Seaweed farming is currently made impractical by accidental overlaps and gaps in of the Fisheries Act, Resource Management Act and EEZ Act. 
The Zero Carbon Bill is an opportunity for minor wording changes to these Acts that would resolve these accidental overlaps and gaps. 
Consolidating the Aquaculture Acts would extend a welcome to responsible investors. 

I know of overseas charitable foundations looking for places they can fund pilot seaweed farming projects, because they see the environmental benefits. In many developed countries like New Zealand, legislation and regulation make this too hard, while in less developed countries a perceived lack of stability and infrastructure impede investors. If we can remove some non-sensical roadblocks, I am convinced we can encourage investors to New Zealand.