Neeve Smith analyses voluntary nature credits market

By Cerys Gibby, Youth Press Gallery, Youth Parliament 2025

Photo Caption: Neeve Smith, Youth MP

Note: Articles in this newsletter edition were produced by the Youth Press Gallery at various stages of the Youth Parliament 2025 programme. Accordingly, the content presented reflects the context and timing at the date of its original writing.

Neeve Smith volunteered to be a part of the Biodiversity Credits Parliamentary Working Group. The Group focused on an emerging voluntary market that involve people or groups generating nature credits by creating positive impacts for the environment. Businesses that harm the environment would buy these credits to offset the harm they cause, in turn funding people or groups that generate nature credits.

The Parliamentary Working Group came together at the two-day event to discuss the possibilities of how such a market would operate at home in Aotearoa New Zealand. Members spent time prior to the event gathering insights as to how their community felt about a voluntary nature credits market to then brought them to the table at Youth Parliament.

Smith found that the emerging voluntary nature credits market was so relevant to her community that she made it the topic of her General Debate Speech, which she delivered in the Parliament Debating Chamber on the 3rd of July.

While many see an emerging voluntary biodiversity credits market as something good for the planet, Smith explored the faults in the current state of the market. In her own electorate, she and her community have witnessed how “farmland that was once used to provide crops for New Zealand are now useless trees”. Smith criticised how farmers were affected by the current biodiversity credits market, pressured by economic gain. She claimed that the selling of farmland “isolates loyal communities”. While this view was influenced by her own experiences living in rural Aotearoa New Zealand, she pointed out that an ineffective voluntary nature credits market harms everyone. “The loss of farmland translates to a loss of food,” she told the chamber, “There’s [becoming] no place to grow meat.”

Smith also put forward her opinions on the possibility of a voluntary carbon credits market, stating her belief that “carbon credits are a double-edged sword.” While she acknowledged that the market existed so that “corporations could do more for climate change”, she also argued that “it is also a cop-out in the sense that corporations can just spend hard instead of actually doing something with substance.”

The points that Smith brought up in her General Debate speech were also brought up in the final Parliamentary Working Group session of Youth Parliament, in which members of the Biodiversity Credits group were able to articulate their concerns to a representative from the Ministry for the Environment.

Concerns of greenwashing and the impacts on farmers were acknowledged, however the Ministry for the Environment explained how the current government is looking to mitigate and regulate these risks. At Fieldays this year, Associate Minister for the Environment Andrew Hoggard announced that the Government was backing a voluntary nature credits market to “show them [farmers] the carrot, and not just the stick,” as “farmers and other private landowners are doing their part to protect native biodiversity and want to do more.”

As the emerging voluntary nature credits market progresses, Smith made one belief in her speech clear: “Let’s make things better for farmers.”