New Zealand: economy and environment in harmony.

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New Zealand has huge coal reserves and, therefore, has a long mining tradition. New mines are not excluded. Needs to back the protection of the environment? The conflict has been brewing for more than 100 years.

Te Wai pounamu, the South island of new Zealand, is the earth a rich stain. Deep in the earth vast commodity are hidden deposits. About thrive in species-rich forests on juicy earth, the picturesque, jagged cliffs. Here, Tradition meets Modernity, is a matter of heated debate is the question of what is more important, coal or the unique nature?

Coal the livelihood of the people is still here. Something like body and soul, to this sparsely populated Region. The Tradition dates back to the 1860s. At that time, the first miners arrived, in order to develop the area. Tough, so they settled in places like Blackball. Here are the breeding ground of the mining industry and the new Zealand labour party. Blackball there are, even today, as a sleepy place with barely 300 inhabitants. One of them is Gribben Sam. And for Gribben mining is nothing wrong with that. He grew up in the dusty world of the coal, he says. His grandfather was a miner, his brothers are miners, and his father was a mechanic in the mines.

The “Bathhurst Dennison Plateau Mine” there was not a long time, their influence on the nature is still enormously

“It’s just important for me,” says Gribben. So he is also in favour of the mining industry. He supported the Union to “Etu” and lived for seven years in Blackball. “Of course, thanks to the mining industry, we could pay off our houses and put food on the table. But it is more than that. It’s about the social atmosphere in the village, because the mining companies to invest money in the community.”

But the industry stumble. Coal prices fluctuate, the cost of production is climbing rapidly. In addition, a burden on the health and safety concerns in the industry. Again and again it comes to accidents. As a result, closing more and more coal mines on the West coast, and make place for new Zealand’s shift towards green energy and environmental protection. The country needs to do to international emission commitments.

Coal mines or conservation

But the coal is not buried yet. Against the Trend new days are build in to planning, above and below ground. For the buddy of Blackball, the good news. It comes to the area of the Buller Plateau, in the vicinity of your city. The mining would expand into a territory, its nature as a special value. Hope against nature. “The people who live here are for the mining industry, because they see the jobs,” says Gribben. “People who are not directly involved in it, are against it. But here there are quite a lot of support for it, that is allowed.”

The new Zealand government wants to carve up the unique habitat, says the conservation organization, “Forest & Bird”. In order for the buyer to Invest in a Mine, and tastier. In the center is the “Stockton Mine”, which is operated by the state mining company “Solid Energy”. The company, however, is already for 2015 in a voluntary bankruptcy. The government wants to get rid of the company. But the larger the coal crisis lasts, the harder that will be.
On the sale of the “Stockton Mine” decides the new Zealand “Overseas Investment Office”. Here foreign be directly monitored investments in new Zealand.
A decision will be in June 2017. The potential buyer is called “Phoenix Coal”, a Joint Venture of the agricultural company “Talley’s Group” and the mining company “Bathurst Resources”.

West coast green Gecko and Great spotted kiwi were threatened by the mining projects

Environmentalists are sounding the Alarm

Kevin Hague is the CEO of “Forest & Bird”. He says that new Zealand’s environment and economy Ministers want to classify the “Buller Plateau”. It should be in protected and non-protected areas divided. The best parts would you give for the mining industry. Hague was a part of the “Buller plateau”, the “Whareatea West”. Here, he says, is to be operated in the open pit.

“This is public, protected Land, and ecologically valuable area on the Plateau. Without the “Whareatea West” lost the integrity of the entire plateau,” said Hague in a statement. “Why does the conservation Minister in Secret, the Land of release, so that it can be destroyed for private Profit instead of public for the protection of the protected area?”

Irretrievable Loss

The environmental protection Agency “Department of Conservation” (DOC) is involved in the plans, irritated many. The authority must approve any mining activities on protected Land. The significance of the Area, from a private DOC-Ranking significantly. In the list of the 1000 most important locations for ecosystem management, the “Denniston Plateau”, a part of the “Buller plateau”, where “Whareatea West” takes, after all, the 93. Place.

He is also directly threatened by planned mining: the Great spotted kiwi (here’s a chick)

The “Forest & Bird”spokeswoman Caitlin Carew says, is the “Buller Plateau” is the only Ecosystem of its kind in new Zealand. In large Parts of the area there is already deep traces of Mining, historical and recent. A further open pit mining would result in the irretrievable loss of the rare Flora and Fauna of the area. Including the Great spotted kiwi, and the West coast green Gecko. Although the mining companies have promised to restore nature after the mining activities are over, would be the nature of never so rich and diverse as it is today, says Carew.

You can also invoke a precedent: In 2013, after a lengthy legal dispute with the “Forest & Bird was operated” an open-cast mine in the “Escarpment Mine on the Denniston Plateau”. The project lived on but not for long, because the Mine was not profitable. But the environmental protection Agency documented, nevertheless a variety of ecological effects.

So far the government has refused to comment on the accusations. The reason: it was “a current affair, to discuss the Minister.”

“The “Buller Plateau” has a significant economic value, but we also understand the need to be balanced against conservation issues,” said new Zealand’s economic development Minister, Simon Bridges.

The Whareatea West area looks, views of the ocean

If not mining, then what?

And therein lies the Problem. Similarly, as municipalities in Germany or the United States, which are dependent on coalmining, there is only Black or White. You can either decide for the satisfaction of the mate, or the unspoiled nature. But even the pals, it is clear that you might win a battle, but at the end of the war: coal, only 5 percent of the energy needs in new Zealand. The industries which use coal will be taxed with the so-called carbon-Credits, which will promote in the foreseeable future, a shift to renewable energies. Add to that the bureaucratic hurdles are high, in order to get a licence for coal extraction.

While the government is so quiet from their participation in the coal industry and some money it deserves, plans you already inevitable structural change. But what is the solution in the end?

Tourism could be an obvious choice, given the lush nature and fantastic views on the West coast. However, money talks but, as of yet. Because miners are paid for their work in the mines so well that they are unlikely to change without a compensation in the tourism industry, where you earn only the minimum wage. They are also a Tradition: 150 years have shaped their communities.

“This,” says a trade unionist Sam Gribben, “is the big question at the Moment.”