The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says the extreme weather that has hammered the country so far this year has laid bare the dirty deal that transnational corporations have cut with New Zealand Inc.
Forestry and other largely foreign-owned extractive industries readily reap profits when the sun shines, but they leave councils and taxpayers to pay the cost of cleaning up the mess when things go wrong. It’s called privatising the profits whilst socialising the costs.
This is a typical case of corporate welfare, where companies’ profits are private but the public bears much of the cost when they face losses.
Now they are lobbying the Coalition Government to ensure they are not held liable when their debris causes environmental destruction.
CAFCA secretary Murray Horton says the problem is most acute in Tairāwhiti. As climate change generates more frequent cyclones, it is now common to see beaches, bridges, roads and homes swamped with slash and sediment from commercial forestry.
“Many of the major forestry businesses operating in and around Tairāwhiti are foreign companies that ship logs overseas for processing. They contribute little or nothing to the economy through value-adding industries,” Mr Horton says.
“Their aim is simply to produce logs as cheaply as possible. They have de-unionised the workforce and forced workers to become contractors or subcontractors. The upshot of this is that forestry is one of the most dangerous industries in the country and has far more fatalities than any other sector”.
“To cut cost they rely on clear cutting, often on unsuitable land that is very steep or unstable. This is the inevitable source of the avalanche of the slash that washes down onto farms, beaches and communities during big storms”.
Repeatedly clearing this forestry debris is a serious financial burden. The long-term clean-up costs for Cyclone Gabrielle alone exceeded $1.2 billion.
Mr Horton says the Government is now making it easier for forestry companies to duck their responsibilities for this environmental destruction.
“Stuff has reported that, as the Gisborne District Council has begun to make forestry companies get resource consents to release slash, they have sought protection from the Government. They want a legal framework that says they will not be held accountable when there is a major deluge of slash”.
Manu Caddie is a spokesperson for the environmental group Mana Taiao Tairāwhiti and a frequent contributor to CAFCA’s publication Foreign Control Watchdog.
In an article for the forthcoming April issue of Watchdog, Mr Caddie writes that companies based in Malaysia, Australia, Japan and China run some of the largest forestry operations in Tairāwhiti. They export most of their logs to Asia.
He says material released through official information requests reveals that forestry representatives want concessions and subsidies before they will support a land-use transition programme that the Tairāwhiti district council wants to implement in order to reduce the environmental harm forestry causes.
“These conditions reportedly included limiting any restrictions on clear-felling, compensation for potential losses, and giving the forestry industry significant control over transition funding”.
“This means communities downstream from these forestry operations will still face the recurring cost of damaged infrastructure and disrupted livelihoods, while much of the financial return flows offshore to institutional investors.”
Mr Caddie says this raises the larger issue as to whether corporate interests are attempting to dilute a process designed to benefit the public and the environment. The issue is no longer simply about forestry, but about democratic accountability and who gets to shape decisions about land-use when the economic stakes are high.