MEDIA STATEMENT

Marama Fox and Te Ururoa Flavell

Māori Party co-leaders

20 October 2016

Māori Party welcomes the debate on climate change

The Māori Party welcomes the latest report from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment ‘Climate change and agriculture and Understanding the biological greenhouse gases’.

“Last year, Aotearoa together with others committed to reducing the impacts of global warming and we continue to support this commitment”, says Māori Party co-leader Te Ururoa Flavell.

“The Māori Party recognises the urgency in finding ways to work together so that we can all address climate change. For so long now we have advocated for a number of solutions including the planting of 100,000 hectares of new forests over the next 10 years,” says Mr Flavell.

“There has been negligible investment in low emission technologies resulting in foresters leaving the climate change scheme and planting is virtually zero. This has a huge impact on those hapū and iwi who have received large forests as part of their Treaty settlement and so we welcome the findings of the report,” says Marama Fox, co-leader of the Māori Party.

“Obviously there are a number of points raised within this latest report that are of concern to the Māori Party such as agricultural emissions as many of our people are involved in farming, and so the need to work together to find sustainable solutions for everyone is important,” says Ms Fox.

The Māori Party has a commitment to ensuring NZ’s natural resources and environment is healthy and supports the wellbeing of everyone.

The Māori Party also commends the Commissioner for producing part of the report in te reo Māori and her commitment to ensure the language is resonated in future reports.

“I encourage everyone to utilise te reo Māori when producing reports and information for the public,” says Mr Flavell.

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