No mining on conservation land promise broken - mining greenwashed and greenlighted for 30% of conservation estate

No mining on conservation land promise broken - mining greenwashed and greenlighted for 30% of conservation estate.

Have you seen this?

An announcement by Acting Minister of Conservation Verrall "Government speeds up stewardship land reclassification".

It seems bureaucratic and innocuous. "National panels of independent experts will assess stewardship land areas and provide recommendations on land classification to the Minister of Conservation."

I am really appalled by it.

Verrall states:

“It’s vital that land with high conservation value is classified correctly to ensure it is protected for its natural and cultural heritage and safeguarded for the future."

“Reclassification fits with the Government’s manifesto commitment to protect, preserve and restore our natural heritage and biodiversity and is one of the Department of Conservation’s (DOC) core roles and responsibilities.

Both these statements are unequivocally false.

First, reclassification is not a means to the end of protecting all stewardship conservation areas. It is allocating the stewardship areas to mining - except the exceptions that make it through a bureaucratic RMA-style hearing panel process. This is like making existing protected conservation areas get resource consent - i.e. go through a tortuous resource consent process run by a hearing panel - just to have the status they already have - protected conservation land.

Secondly, breaking a clear and repeated promise "There will be no new mines on conservation land." (in the Speech from the Throne when Parliament convened on 8 November 2017 and confirmed by Minister of Conservation Eugenie Sage) can never be consistent with a Government's manifesto commitment.

Some background.

The Department of Conservation has a web page on Stewardship land which completely omits the fact that mining access can be approved on it.

The "backdoor" for access is under the Crown Minerals Act 1991. Under Section 61, mining companies can obtain mining access to any crown land after applying to the relevant Minister. That includes the conservation estate and the Minister of Conservation.

However, under Section 61A, a Minister "must not accept any application" for mining access for any area described in Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act 1991.

Stewardship conservation land is not included in Schedule 4. The Minister may grant mining access agreements to stewardship areas in spite of the statutory purpose of management is conservation. This acts as a "back door" access route outside of the Conservation Act 1987. Pike River Coal Company is an example of a company that has (or had obtained) an access agreement.

I am appalled at the substance of this - confirming the minerals sector's ability to get mining access to stewardship land - and the PR spin given - that some conservation areas will be better protected when the opposite is true - a complete capitulation to the minerals sector that of today they are invited back to apply for mining access to 30% of the conservation estate.

I have a thought experiment/counterfactual to show how devious I think this is.

Say the Government had announced a process to allocate some stewardship land to mining. That panels of independent experts will provide recommendations on land parcels to be allocated to mining. That would go down with the ENGOs and the public like a cup of cold sick. That would be 40,000 people marching down Queen Street against Gerry Brownlee's 2009 proposal to allow more mining in other conservation areas. At least Brownlee had the honesty to back down in 2010.

But this counterfactual will have exactly the same overall result as Verrall's proposal. Mining access will be allocated to conservation areas. Except that in the counterfactual, the burden of proof is on mining and not conservation.

In the reclassification option, the burden of proof is on establishing conservation values. As of today, the mining industry is returned to the policy settings prior to Jacinda's promise "Mining on conservation land will be ended" - mining can have a go at mining access for all stewardship land - 30% of the conservation estate - with no risk of policy change. The burden of proof has been reversed and is now on conservation.

This is politically a classic trick of natural resource exploiters - reframe the narrative and reverse the burden of proof that applies. And then spin this as protection and promotion of conservation when it is destruction. That's why I am calling this egregious greenwashing and greenlighting of mining access to conservation areas.

The 'worthys' who have been nominated to these mining allocation panels, like the former PCE Dr Jan Wright, should resign from these panels, rather than be complicit in allocating conservation areas to mining all the while greenwashing that result as protection of conservation.