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Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme—Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill

In short — Arapono’s summary

This bill limits how much farmland can be converted to exotic (non-native) forests and registered in New Zealand's carbon credit scheme (the Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS). Currently, landowners earn carbon credits by planting exotic forests, which can be sold for money. This has encouraged large-scale conversion of farmland to forestry. The bill caps how much of a farm's productive land can be registered as exotic forestry for credits, and sets a yearly national limit on a particular type of farmland. Some exemptions apply, including for certain Māori-owned land and for people who had already started investing before the policy was announced.

What this affects

Tap a topic to see how this bill touches it — with the parts of the text it’s based on.

The bill limits how much farmland converted to exotic forests can earn carbon credits in New Zealand's carbon trading scheme, to prevent the system from being dominated by forestry.

From the bill

The bill would restrict the amount of exotic forestry conversions on Land Use Capability (LUC) class 1–6 farmland that can be registered in the ETS.

Under the bill, landowners and rights holders could register a maximum of 25 percent of the LUC class 1–6 land on an individual farm as exotic forestry in the ETS.

The bill would also create a national limit of 15,000 hectares of LUC class 6 land that could be registered as exotic forestry each year.

Where parties stand on Climate

Progress through Parliament

Introduced

First Reading

Select Committee● Current stage

Environment Committee Committee — open for public submissions at this stage.

Second Reading

Committee of the whole House

Third Reading

Royal Assent

Have your say

This bill is at the select committee stage — the time when the public can make submissions to the Environment Committee Committee. Draft yours with Arapono, then lodge it through the official Parliament process before the closing date.

Draft a submission

View the official bill on legislation.govt.nz

Bill text sourced from legislation.govt.nz (Parliamentary Counsel Office). Arapono’s summary and breakdown are drafted with AI grounded in that official text and reviewed by an Arapono editor for accuracy and neutrality before publishing. Arapono is non-partisan and takes no position on this bill.