| Step back from the detail of the legislation that is set to regulate the oceans and continental shelf around New Zealand and there is no coherent philosophical structure to the regime. The law being set up to control environmentally risky activities like deep water oil drilling has the spine of a jellyfish. In a bid to minimise legal grounds for objecting to mining in the EEZ, the government may end up scoring an own goal by delivering too much legal uncertainty for developers through the Bill reported back from select committee on 15 May (the Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Bill). Continue reading>> |
| Will losing the right to choose GM Free food be a price of the next and biggest free trade deal? The US has made clear that a priority for the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the abolition of laws that require GM foods to be labelled. That puts New Zealand in its sights as here, use of GM ingredients in food products must generally be labelled. Although there are exemptions such as highly refined oils and GM contamination below 1%, New Zealand food companies and supermarkets have avoided ingredients in their products that would trigger the labelling and retailers essentially do not stock products tagged as GM. Without the labelling law, New Zealanders who want to avoid GMOs in their food would have to rely on the willingness of producers to declare such content - or a patchwork of independent testing. Continue reading >>
Read the Sustainability Council briefing >> |
| If New Zealand chose not to approve the use of GM grasses developed by Pastoral Genomics, no economic penalty is expected as a non-GM technique could provide the same projected gains. Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) could deliver equal economic benefits without the risk of triggering the type of consumer resistance that GM food has provoked. Documents released to the Sustainability Council under the Official Information Act provide the first detailed analysis of the economics of genetically modified grasses to become public. They reveal how surprisingly thin the projected benefits are even when just considering it as an investment. The Council’s analysis is set out in a report entitled Betting the Farm. Read the analysis: Betting the Farm. Economic Impacts of Introducing GM Grasses >> Semantically Engineered Grasses. New Zealand Developers’ New Spin on GM >>
Hide and Seek. Developers Skirt Around Detectability of Cisgenic GMOs >>
New Zealand GM Pasture Grass R+D. Three Programmes and a New Technology >>
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| A UN review team has officially confirmed that New Zealand’s response to climate change is inadequate. It could find no plan for two thirds or more of what is required to meet the nation’s emissions reduction target for 2020. The review voices its “great concern” about whether New Zealand will put measures in place in time to do so. The review also raises concerns about the quality of estimates New Zealand submitted to the UN. The Sustainability Council’s investigations show that most of the estimated emission savings are not credible or are uncertain. Half the amount expected to be saved is based on the ETS stopping hypothetical coal-fired power stations that no one has actually proposed to build. The paradox is that New Zealand has a wealth of carbon reduction opportunities. The nation could achieve the middle of its 2020 target range of 10% to 20% below 1990 levels at no economic cost if it faced an effective carbon price of $30/t. Read the analysis here |
| New Zealand women are being exposed to cosmetic products containing a type of nanomaterial that has been stripped from the shelves in Europe and Australia. Products containing nanoparticles called “fullerenes” remain on sale in New Zealand even though the European cosmetics industry has pledged not to use them until more is known about their safety. Three product lines – Perricone MD’s Ceramic Eye Smoother and Skin Smoother and Dr Brandt’s Lineless Cream - are labelled by the manufacturers as containing fullerenes. Other major cosmetic companies appear to be using other types of nanomaterials. The cosmetics are part of a rising tide of consumer products containing nanomaterials that have been put on the New Zealand market without risk assessment by ERMA and often before the information is at hand to allow such analysis.
>> Read more here. >> Read the report here.
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