The Afforestation Grant Scheme is one of the few success stories of New Zealand's climate change policy. It basically pays people to plant forest on marginal land, with the crown retaining all carbon credits. And its successful - the latest tender round was oversubscribed, and paid out $4 million for 2688 hectares of new forest - an average of just under $1,500 per hectare, or (in the long run) about $3 per ton of carbon. Compare this to the current NZ carbon price of ~NZ$18 (a figure which is only going to rise), and its a very good deal for us.
So naturally, the government is killing it off, cutting the funding by $2 million a year for three years before cancelling it entirely.
This is just utter madness. if we want to deal with our long-term emissions problem, we should be boosting this scheme, not cutting it. But to a government of the right, it seems everything looks like "waste"...
