Business Case

Aotearoa is on track to spend up to $24bn on offshore offsets to 2030 – a major transfer of New Zealand’s wealth.

Recloaking Papatūānuku would provide a better way for Aotearoa to meet decarbonisation targets while avoiding a large wealth transfer and delivering economic and biodiversity benefits to local and rural communities while increasing economic and disaster resilience.

The programme is expected to capture ~1,500 million TCO2 between the years 2024 and 2100,  the equivalent of approx. 20 years of NZ’s current emissions (76.8 million TCO2 in 2021).

Our calculations are built on conservative sequestration rates and do not capture the methane reductions possible from reducing ungulate populations.

Costs
The Recloaking Papatūānuku programme supports Aotearoa’s future NDC commitments with at a lower average abatement cost of $32/TCO2 compared to international offsets ~$60/TCO2 , with a total expected cost of ~$11.8-12.1bn by 2050.

When discounted to its present value, the programme is expected to cost $8.5-9.5bn by 2050.

Additional benefits
Recloaking Papatūānuku could deliver employment benefits through the creation of thousands of seasonal jobs per year to complete planting and through additional job creation in later years for forest management, along with education benefits that come from community-driven involvement and ownership.

Policy options
The Recloaking Papatūānuku programme could be structured under one of three policy options:
(1): Landowners receive Crown financing to reforest land, repaying it through ETS income. They own ETS revenues and repay Crown loans;
(2): Landowners get an upfront grant for reforestation, sharing costs with the Crown. They use ETS income or carbon credit sales, sharing revenues with the Crown, which has a right of first refusal;
(3): Crown funds reforestation and gets carbon credits in return. Crown covers all upfront costs, and landowners receive a yearly incentive payment to support land use change.

We propose developing option 3. Further work is underway on incentive design, policy evaluation, market development, and implementation planning.

Pure Advantage have released a business case report on Recloaking Papatūānuku developed by a collective of experts. The programme and report is backed by a wide range of cross-industry leaders, many of which have outlined the reasons for their support.