Analysis: In December, Shane Jones, the Resources Minister, used the traditional “address in reply” debate in Parliament to outline New Zealand First’s policy agenda.
After three years in the political wilderness, Jones attacked the “hysteria surrounding climate change”. “Gone” were significant natural areas, and national policy statements on biodiversity, he said, which were “squashing the bejesus out of people’s property rights”.
“Mining is coming back as well,” he declared.
“We most certainly need those rare earth minerals. In those areas called the Department of Conservation estate, where it’s stewardship land, stewardship land is not DoC land, and if there is a mineral, if there is a mining opportunity, and it’s impeded by a blind frog, goodbye, Freddy.
“We are going to extract the dividend from Mother Nature’s legacy on the DoC estate in those areas previously called stewardship land.”
(A week earlier, on December 5, Jones, who is also the Associate Minister of Energy, met mining industry lobby group Straterra at the Beehive. He would do so again on January 23, and, that evening, he sat down with the lobby group and unnamed “industry stakeholders” at the nearby Bolton Hotel.)
Jones’ framing of a frog versus economic progress is simplistic, to say the least, but it has echoes in recent history on the South Island’s West Coast.
In the mid-2000s, more than 6000 giant snails, Powelliphanta augusta, were removed from the summit of Mt Augustus so state-owned Solid Energy could extend the Stockton Mine. A huge number of snails were placed in fridges.
About 30 kilometres away of Stockton, in the mountains south-east of Westport, another years-long battle pitting nature against the economy is coming to a head.
Earlier this month, the High Court was scheduled to hear arguments about the Te Kuha open-cast coal mine, planned for a highly visible, near-pristine area of native forest, shrublands, and herbfields.
The mine proposal, spanning 144 hectares at heights of more than 600 metres above sea level, would progressively remove a section of ridgeline “with steep notches cut on the skyline”.
However, New Zealand company Stevenson Mining withdrew its appeal, leading to speculation it’s hoping for approval through the Government’s controversial fast-track consenting process.
Such approval would overturn legal losses, and a ministerial decision, suffered over years by Stevenson Mining and its associated company Rangitira Developments. (The first consent for the mine was lodged in 1996, when Stevenson had different owners.)
Before excavators move in, and the pits are dug, the public has its own rich resource – expert evidence and official advice produced for consent applications and court hearings – to discover what might be destroyed or degraded by mining at Te Kuha.
It includes habitat for the country’s rarest butterfly: the forest ringlet butterfly.
The values of the coalition Government are clear. It has said its “fast-track” is an unapologetic “disruption” to push through projects blocked by the “red tape”, some of which are environmental considerations, “holding New Zealand back”.
(More permissive policies are being adopted. On Tuesday, Jones announced changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) to make it easier for coal mines to get consent.)
Is the Government’s money-over-nature approach acceptable to the public? Public submissions on the Fast Track Approvals Bill close on Friday.
Nationally significant population
In an Environment Court judgment released this past year – the subject of Stevenson Mining’s now-abandoned appeal to the High Court – referred to evidence from entemologist Brian Patrick, a specialist in moths and butterflies.
He said the footprint of the mine site contained the largest-known population of the forest ringlet butterfly remaining nationwide. Other experts agreed with his assessment.
The Te Kuha population of forest ringlet butterflies was nationally significant, Patrick told the court, occupying habitat that was “intact, extensive and high-quality”.
“It is iconic and the only species within a genus that is only found in New Zealand. Its disappearance has been documented from large areas across the North Island.”
Experts stated the site also had significant flora values. Forests in the area had been stable for several hundred years, it was believed, with cores from pink pine revealing some trees were 500 years old.
Vascular and non-vascular plant species classified as threatened and at risk had been identified there. (Vascular plants have vessels to transport water and food.)
Te Kuha was “unusually rich and diverse” in non-vascular bryophytes, such as the liverwort species Pseudolopocles denticulate, which was classified threatened, nationally critical. (It’s the plant’s only known South Island site.)
Environment Court Judge Prue Steven, sitting with two commissioners, said consents should not be granted, mainly because of legal protections of biodiversity values and wetlands.
“It is primarily intact, visibly free from human disturbance, and essentially pristine.”
Description of the Te Kuha area in a joint report by DoC and MBIE
More can be gleaned from a report prepared by the Department of Conservation and Business Ministry (MBIE) for Conservation Minister Eugenie Sage, and Megan Woods, the Energy and Resources Minister.
After receiving the report in 2018, the ministerial pair, from the Greens and Labour, respectively, declined an application by Rangitira to access 12 hectares of public conservation land to develop the mine.
The application was said to be inconsistent with the Conservation Act as mining would cause impacts – some of them permanent – on land “containing a largely intact, natural and unique environment.”
Economic modelling showed the project was commercially viable. Based on assumptions about coal prices, the estimated value of the coal produced was $900 million.
The Crown would expect to earn $9 million in royalties
But DoC’s economic reviewer Ian Dickson said the project was “borderline” if it couldn’t withstand “a ‘perfect storm’ of concatenated specific risks”, like cost overruns, and lower than expected coal prices. Coal quality could be variable.
Rangitira took umbrage at the comments, saying they weren’t supported by the facts and, nevertheless, “a storm never lasts 16 years”.
“As a private company we would not undertake this project if it did not make financial sense and in our company and experts’ view this Te Kuha project is commercially feasible and will add significant economic benefit to the Buller and West Coast district communities.”
It was estimated the company would spend about $40 million during the 12-month construction period.
Once operational, the mine would create roughly 58 full-time-equivalent jobs. Beyond the wage bill of $5.8 million a year, a further $28 million was expected to be spent, $13 million of which in the Buller district.
That would, no doubt, be welcome news on the West Coast, where some communities are struggling, with businesses failing, school rolls dropping, and a decline in social and community services.
However, many would be opposed to the Government approving a coal mine during a climate crisis.
United Nations secretary-general António Guterres has said fossil fuels are the problem. “Countries must progressively phase them out, moving to leave oil, coal & gas in the ground – and massively boost renewable investments.”
Because Te Kuha’s coal is expected to be exported, and burnt overseas, climate accounting rules mean the company wouldn’t need to account for the resulting greenhouse gas emissions domestically, only fugitive emissions from production.
As a result, the project’s estimated “net present value” increased by $10 million.
(Open-cast mining is inconsistent with aspects of the West Coast conservation strategy, which said DOC “must manage for the impacts of climate change where necessary.” However, the strategy provided no guidance on said management.)
The joint DoC/MBIE report to ministers painted a mosaic of Te Kuha’s natural values, in a landscape pocked with rocky outcrops, sandstone pavements, and boulder fields.
“It is primarily intact, visibly free from human disturbance, and essentially pristine,” the report said.
Rangitira’s experts, and DoC’s reviewers, said the wider Te Kuha site, including the proposed mine area, “exhibits a high degree of intactness and lack of exotic plant species”.
The site and its surrounds have been recommended for protection because of the vegetation’s significance.
The Brunner coal measure habitat was “nationally and internationally unique” for having very high ecological and conservation value.
Rangitira proposed “safeguards and mitigation measures” at Te Kuha, and a compensation package, including a 25-year ecosystem management projects over 5000ha in the nearby Orikaka Forest. It also promised to fund a mining heritage project.
The report said despite those measures, the open-cast mine “would lead to residual adverse effects and a permanent loss of conservation values”.
“Rehabilitation of the [access arrangement] area would likely take many decades, and in some cases centuries for the slow-growing species.
“After rehabilitation, the environment and the final ecosystem would be different to the present one and it would have permanently altered a primarily intact and undisturbed natural ecosystem.
“The landscape would never be returned to the current diversity of landform and the natural vegetation would not be fully restored.”
Rangitira Development Ltd (RDL) and its experts pushed back on some of the findings by ecological experts.
“RDL has committed to rehabilitation methods that have been demonstrated to achieve a ‘full’ cover of native species within about 10 years of establishment, noting that in some areas the cover of native vegetiation is deliberately restricted (using rocks or boulders) to mimic natural ecosystems and underpin heterogeneity of landscape.”
While rehabilitation necessarily means using younger plants, the company said using vegetation direct transfer (VDT) “can diversify the age profile of tolerant species in suitable soils to at least several decades.”
VDT involves pieces of habitat, including plants and the topsoil layer, being removed using specialised machinery and transferred, usually on a truck, to a rehabilitation area. About 2.7ha of the 12ha of Te Kuha’s conservation land was thought to be appropriate for direct transfer.
The DoC/MBIE report noted “it is very difficult to know exactly how much could be achieved” by VDT.
In rejecting Rangitira’s access application, Labour Minister Woods said: “We felt that in this instance that the irreversible and permanent costs to the natural environment were too high and outweighed the economic benefits from the proposal.”
In a judicial review of the decision, Rangitira accused Minister Sage of bias and predetermination because she opposed the project while working for conservation group Forest & Bird in the 1990s. The High Court dismissed the application, saying the evidence showed Sage brought an open mind to her assessment and determination.
Justice Karen Clark said it was up to ministers to decide when it was appropriate to step aside from decisions under section 7 of the Constitution Act.
She added: “It seems to me that in a situation such as the present where a minister not only has a long-standing – and legitimately held – view point about open cast mining, but also a history of opposition to the applicant’s proposed mining operations at the same site once opposed, s7 of the Constitution Act might usefully be invoked with the aim of maintaining public confidence in the integrity of executive decision-making.”
Four years ago, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by Rangitira over land access arrangements with Buller’s council to develop the Te Kuha mine.
(The appeal centred on the council’s consideration of access under various pieces of legislation, including the Reserves Act, the Crown Minerals Act, and the Coal-mines Act 1925.)
Rangitira, which had a mining permit, was fought all the way to the nation’s top court by Forest & Bird.
The majority of the Te Kuha mine area, including the access road, is a water conservation reserve administered by Buller’s council. A further 12ha is public conservation land; stewardship land within the Mt Rochfort Conservation Area.
(Stewardship land is the classification given to areas which haven’t been fully assessed for conservation values since 1987, when DoC was established. The Conservation Act says stewardship land has to be managed so natural and historic resources are protected.)
Helpfully, the background to the Supreme Court judgment laid out the environment versus economic arguments.
The Te Kuha mine location had “extensive areas of intact low forest in which pink and yellow silver pine are important components”. Ecological advice provided to Rangitira said the reserve contained “significant” – as defined by the RMA – indigenous vegetation and habitat for indigenous fauna.
“Twenty-three species of indigenous birds are identified in the mining permit area, two of which are threatened (the great spotted kiwi and the New Zealand falcon) and five of which are described as ‘at risk’.
“There are at-risk lizard species.”
Landscape evidence provided to Rangitira, for its consent application, said the mine site had “very high natural character”, and is part of a mountain range (visible from Westport) with high visual amenity.
The judgment also said the proposed mine area was part of a large coal resource. (Te Kuha is where the Brunner and Paparoa coal measures overlap.)
“The types of coal that are present have properties that make them high-value commodities which attract premium prices.
“The mine is expected to produce about four million tonnes of coal over its estimated 16-year mine life. Rangitira expects the mining operation to provide employment on-site and in Westport for 58 full-time equivalent staff.”
It’s easy to frame this battle of environment versus economy as a handful of rare and threatened plants and animals standing in the way of dozens of jobs, and an increase in high-value export revenue.
It sounds attractive: more jobs, more people living in communities, higher spending at retail shops, and pubs.
The expert evidence shows what’s at stake. The West Coast, a tourism destination famed for its natural beauty, is a network of protected natural areas were humans can be found in isolated pockets.
If the economic scales are tilted, it could start to lose that naturalness.
And for what?
The Te Kuha area is “primarily intact, visibly free from human disturbance, and essentially pristine”, we’re told. Habitat stable for several hundred years could be, in parts, destroyed and degraded by the open-cast mine, with some slow-growing parts taking centuries to recover.
A ridgeline visible from Westport would be progressively removed.
All this to create 58 jobs (and dozens more indirectly, of course), with the mine’s operational spending of $28 million a year. The Crown would earn royalties of $9 million over the project’s 16-year life.
Is that worth it?
The Government’s perspective will become clearer when the list of fast-track projects is revealed.
It’s worth noting, though, the slice of public conservation land within the proposed Te Kuha mine footprint is stewardship land – a class of land from which, Resources Minister Shane Jones said, the country should extract “the dividend from Mother Nature’s legacy”.
Could the forest ringlet butterfly be similar to Jones’ mythical blind frog?
If so, Te Kuha seems a likely candidate for the Government to say, “Goodbye butterfly”.
This is terrifying and has ushered in The Post Truth Era where denial has become mainstream.
Shane Jones (‘Mr. Climate Religion’), and others in this new government, intuitively know that only so well and that they must play out their desperate fantasies of exploitation now or lose their chance forever. (Along with our ‘like minded’ ally USA and most openly in the person of Donald Trump.) ((And the rest of the world.))
One of our steps to build a sustainable future, already taken over the years even before climate change became a focus, has been an interest in conservation and the opposition to mining. So naturally, Mr Climate Religion has picked mining as one of his main lines of attack. This goes well with Simeone Brown’s attack by climate emissions in his single minded attention on roads for transport.
Ask me (ask yourself, actually) whether our electorate is willing to accept this from the new government.
Well, it will be a time for citizens to stand up and protest if a decision to mine from this government is given, and if necessary, to occupy the area to prevent it. Manapouri wasnt saved by good intentions, this is the time to put a stick in the ground over what is and isn’t the way forward for NZ.
Crucially this is not to mine rare earths for EVs, but coal for burning. Regardless of what the environment is like there we shouldn’t be mining coal for burning. We know that Carbon Capture and Storage of some of the CO2 emissions is theoretically possible but not being done at scale beyond pilot plants. The question really is, would we find this acceptable if the mining companies could guarantee that those buying it would capture 80% of the CO2. But of course that would mean ignoring the CO2 cost of mining the stuff, transporting it to Lyttleton and shipping it across the other side of the world. You pretty quickly get to the conclusion that its terrible on all fronts.
It is only a matter of time before Shane Jones, in the style of Scott Morrison, brings a lump of coal to parliament and shouts “this is coal”. And look where Scott Morrison is now.
Noting the 12ha of land Ministers Sage and Woods sought to protect were the very top of the mountain: Mt Rochfort, which is on the conservation estate. This section contains the best of the entire proposed mine’s coal, but the economic modelling you mention includes access to these 12 ha. Stevenson didn’t revise its economic modelling based on a mine without access to the best bits, so it’s likely those figures are wrong.