'The Nation'

Tim Groser Interviewed By Stephen Parker

STEPHEN Joining me in the studio is Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser. The Global Research Alliance meeting took place in Te Papa, it seemed to come and go quite quickly, but for you how big a deal was that meeting?

TIM GROSER – Minister of Climate Change Negotiations
Well you know you don’t have to be a big country to have a big idea is one way of summing it up Stephen. For me it was the essential follow up to the political launch in Copenhagen. I mean I don’t think it's exaggerating to say that the launch of that in Copenhagen is one of the few actual practical things that came out of that meeting, and it was our responsibility to keep momentum going on it, get the scientists involved, I mean what we're trying to do is to set this up politically and then get the politicians out of the way and don’t let the politics interfere with the science, so I was very pleased with the meeting indeed.

STEPHEN When you looked around the table and saw who was there, who stood out for you as the players that you wanted at the table?

TIM Well first and foremost the United States and China. China's still looking at this initiative, it's got observer status, I'm very confident that they will come on board fully, but when you’ve got China and the United States in the same room on anything to do with climate change you’ve got the countries that are responsible for 40% of the net flow of emissions into the atmosphere. You can't do anything in climate change without China and the United States, so I mean that to me is a very simple question to answer.

STEPHEN So when those doors were shut what were they saying to each other China and the US, were they engaging, are they interested.

TIM Well the United States is strongly in favour of this initiative, and you know I really have to give enormous credit to the United States, not only for its political support but for its financial support. So we put up the equivalent of 30 million US into this initiative, quite separate from the funding for our own research of course, on that very interesting clip which you showed before, and the United States has come up with 130 million US and without the support of the United States I don’t think we'd have got traction.

STEPHEN Well New Zealand led initiative, what about the Chinese are they buying into it?

TIM There's one country that emits more than 1.1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases form agriculture in the world, and it is of course China, it's not hard to understand why they have to feed a quarter of the people in the world. Then there's what I call the sort of half billion club, countries that emit between four and six hundred million tonnes of greenhouse gases and they are the EU27, India, Brazil, the United States and Indonesia. We've got them all involved in this alliance, we've got the people that matter.

STEPHEN So the Chinese are obviously this massive growing country and they're looking at us with solutions that they might want to take, so what are they here for, are they gonna come in and poach the technology so to speak?

TIM Well I mean first of all while of course we're focused on livestock, and livestock is a huge issue in this, the Global Research Alliance is much broader than just livestock, it's about rice paddy management, I mean this is the most important staple crop in the world, it's about soil sequestration, it's about cropland management, and all of these issues, so we're focused on livestock obviously because that’s the basis of our agriculture sector, but for China all of these issues are important and I hope that they’ll be looking not just in New Zealand, I don’t think we will contribute to the research on paddy rice management, that’s not our field, but they're looking to New Zealand to organise this, to pull it together, we're a friendly face, not contentious, I think there's a classic New Zealand play of being if you like constructive small country that everyone's comfortable to lead an initiative like this.

STEPHEN Let me ask you about this though, you don’t need me to tell you this from your experience as a Trade Minister, it's like a trade talk and so often you get a lot of high profile people or policy experts in a room with laudable goals, and then nothing happens for decades. So why is this going to be any different?

TIM Well I have to tell you this, it was a joy being with scientists and not foreign policy and trade negotiators, because these guys, and I mean women as well obviously, they don’t play this game, they're much more practical, they don’t ask for the floor to make endless repetitive interventions, and I was in a room with people who wanted to make things happen and it was a welcome relief frankly from the realities of the WTO on the trade side, and Copenhagen on the climate change political side.

STEPHEN So just quickly what happens next?

TIM Well we've been given the pen for another 12 months, which I think's a vote of confidence in New Zealand. The work proceeds on two fronts. First of all we have to coordinate what's called, to use the jargon, the governance of this, you know who's doing what, how are we going to coordinate this, and of course there's a funding issue at the end of this chain. The real heart of the science is being done in three research groups which we set up in Wellington, one on livestock which New Zealand and the Netherlands will co-chair as it were, one on cropland which we chaired by the United States, and the other on paddy rice management which will be chaired by Japan. Those three research groups are the real engine of this whole initiative, they're going to meet in three different places all round the world in the next six months, and then we've gotta pull together the organisational structure of this, we're looking for ward to a major international conference in about 12 months time, so we can pull all these different elements together. I think we'll get there.

STEPHEN Well one elephant in the room if you like on all of this is intellectual property, and the Prime Minister after that opening day went outside and when asked about the leading research New Zealand has, he suggested that we would make it available for free to other nations. Is that the case?

TIM Well we're strongly oriented to what's called the open source model, I thought Professor Searchinger was very interesting and I basically think he's right that the world is moving into this model whereby you make generally available information to all scientists. Okay there may be a role then for people to spin off some patented stuff off the back of that, because you don’t want to shut out the wealth creation process from the private sector, but the orientation of this alliance is very strongly towards open source innovation, and I think that’s the model we're going in a number of areas around the world on this highly complex issue.

STEPHEN Well how does that work though, because if you look at a company like Fonterra, it's an industry that’s put in money to some of this research, these guys at Agrisearch in Palmerston North have been working on this for seven years, partially funded by industry, they're surely not going to be comfortable for the political leaders then to offer it to others in the world.

TIM I think there's a range of solutions out here, there will always have to be a role for copyrighted patented invention innovation in all fields of knowledge, anyone who thinks that the whole thing can be done on the open source method is probably not really aware of the power of the private markets, and even in as you say some government paid research may well be suitable for this, but the orientation is strongly towards open source. There are other techniques, interestingly the metaphor with the trips in public health, the HIV medicines is an interesting model whereby you can segment the world market, make technologies which are costing hundreds of millions to develop, available to the poor people without necessarily compromising the economic return in the developed markets. I think we can get around this.

STEPHEN Is that possible, because without you know denying the laudable goals of saving the planet, or the Aids model as you talk about, surely this is a leading edge bit of research which could be a big export earner into the country. Has enough thought gone in on how New Zealand is going to capture that?

TIM Well we always identified this as the elephant in the room, that was the cliché we used in our internal conversations in the lead up to this. All I can say is we haven't got a perfect solution, we will have to develop that in consensus process with all our other partners in this initiative. I'm very happy that it didn’t block progress at this Wellington meeting, so you know I think all the countries are concerned where this is an issue we're just taking it step by step, we're not naïve about this, we know it's a problem but we will try and find a balanced solution.

STEPHEN Let's go back to where I started with that question though, the Prime Minister said we're going to make it available for free, that’s not the case.

TIM Well the basic information is going to be made available for free, there will always be a role on the side of that for some patented copyright material I'm sure.

STEPHEN Now how does this leave us in terms of that broader climate change position, is this giving us this initiative with the Global Research Alliance a foreign policy tool if you like, does it get us through a few more doors on climate change negotiations?

TIM Absolutely, and I mean one upshot of it is – and I'm off to a ministerial meeting convened by Angela Merkel the Chancellor of Germany and I understand I'm being asked to lead the discussion on technology. I think that’s a direct consequence of this initiative, so yes it is. New Zealand lacks power right, four and a half million people, size of Sydney. We've only got ideas to leverage off, and I think this puts us into the centre of the climate change process.

STEPHEN Now everyone knows about Copenhagen and it was a mixed bag.

TIM To put it mildly.

STEPHEN Mildly, okay we'll say it was a failure then, well whatever way you'd like to put it, but it certainly fell long short, well short of some of the earlier expectations, and you were saying going into Copenhagen months and months before that it will probably not be a successful negotiation. So where do you see it going to now, where do you see the breakthrough coming?

TIM Well I mean the fundamental problem in Copenhagen was the political model that was developed for the conference which was the you know pile – all 45,000 demonstrators out there, buttress this with famous film stars saying the planet is at stake, get President Obama and the Premier of China together and it's too big to fail. Well rubbish nothing is too big to fail, the League of Nations failed with terrible consequences, I think that model is naïve. What we're now trying to do is build up incrementally progress, step by step, it's the only model I know that works in international debates.

STEPHEN Well how incremental is it going to be?

TIM Well I think we can make some progress at Mexico. Probably the international community's swung from ludicrous optimism about achieving and full and ratifiable agreement in Copenhagen, to absurd pessimism that nothing can be done. Well I don’t accept that at all, I think something can be done, we can build on the Copenhagen Accord which was at least something we got out of Copenhagen and we can build on initiatives like the New Zealand initiative in terms of the research. So we're here for the long haul, climate change isn't going away in terms of international politics because of the disappointing result in Copenhagen, New Zealand's got to address this long term, and I think that’s exactly what we're doing.

STEPHEN Yes but well you might argue as those in the farming community do, that we've jumped out of the gate maybe a little bit too quickly, we've got our Emissions Trading Scheme about to start, our if I understand from a media release from Nick Smith the other day that our Kyoto obligations are well in credit, you know under the ETS forecast, notionally at least, and the rest of the world seems to be lagging behind.

TIM Well the rest of the world is trying to get its act together, that’s I think a better way of putting it, I mean I think we've got our act together to be frank, we've got an Emissions Trading Scheme which we've turned the speed down on, Dr Smith is in charge of that area of responsibility, I think we're very comfortable with where we are. I realise that not all people agree with us, because they seem to think climate change is just going to go away and it's all collapsed in Copenhagen, but the fundamental political judgement Stephen is, has it collapsed. Now we don’t think it has collapsed, we think that the imperative there for the world to continue its efforts is still there, and New Zealand's gotta make a start, so it's made a start in terms of its domestic policy, it's not the most aggressive domestic policy in the world, but we're on the page, we've made a start on a serious research initiative. I think we're in good shape.

STEPHEN Would you like to just switch direction quickly, trade hat. Obviously John Key's been in Washington this week, he's had some good access met Joe Biden, any progress there on that trans Pacific partnership?

TIM Oh sure, we've had the first negotiating meeting, not at a political level but the just lead negotiator senior official, and we had a meeting in Melbourne, there were apparently more than 200 officials in the room believe it or not, it looks more like a sort of Geneva WTO meeting than a bilateral FTA discussion. It is going to be hugely complicated, they're still at this process now of sort of trying to scope the exercise, what are the issues that we're going to do, what's the structure of a final agreement. So it's got a long way to go.

STEPHEN But the Americans are they moving at all in any way that’s going to help us?

TIM Absolutely, I mean not only have you had the Prime Minister discuss this at very senior levels, and not for the first time either, the PM and I met very senior US officials at APEC in Singapore, and the US was just at that point of fully coming on board, but at the more technical level what the United States is doing is prioritising this initiative in terms of their passageway into the Asia Pacific architecture, I think it's very significant.

STEPHEN Okay well I'll leave you with that thought there, we've got the panel discussion coming so we'll pick up on that in the panel discussion.

ENDS

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