Kia ora koutou,
my name is Urs Peter Signer. I have lived with my whānau in South Taranaki for close to 20 years and am currently a market gardener teaching horticulture at tertiary level. I seek your support to be elected to the Taranaki Regional Council as a strong advocate for the climate, our struggling provincial communities and to protect the ocean from seabed mining. I support the retention of the Māori wards as a step towards Te Tiriti justice and encourage you to vote in favour of the Māori wards. My top priorities are supporting farmers to shift to regenerative agricultural systems for local markets, expanding public transport and improving the health of our rivers, land and sea. Given the state of our planet, it is time for transformative change. We need grassroots and collective solutions for a just, fair and regenerative future.
Regenerative Agriculture
In order to stop catastrophic climate change, we need to urgently bring down our emissions. With almost 50% of Aotearoa's emissions coming from the agricultural industry, it is vital that we radically change our farming practices from intensive to extensive, from entropic to syntropic, from degenerative to regenerative. While the way we farm has had a significant negative impact on the environment, we can change the way we do things and start to sequester carbon, diversify production, reforest many parts of the region and ensure that the social, environmental and economic spheres start to align again.
Public Transport
We need urgent action to improve our public transport network. Public transport has numerous benefits: it connects people and communities, enables the poor the get around easier, drastically reduces our emissions and de-congests roads. While there have been some improvements in recent years such as the introduction of The Connector service linking Te Hāwera and New Plymouth, we need a lot more investment and support, particularly for rural South Taranaki. I am passionate about public transport and want to see a well-designed, frequent and affordable public transport network for our whole region.
Swimmable Rivers
We all know that Taranaki's rivers, creeks and wetlands are really struggling. For too long, the impacts of agriculture have meant that our kids have not been able to swim in many rivers around the mountain. We need to work together to bring about change to farming practices to ensure that all waterways are protected to the highest standard. 76% of indigenous freshwater fish species (39 of 51) are currently threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened. Clean rivers ensures that we can turn this statistic around.
my name is Urs Peter Signer. I have lived with my whānau in South Taranaki for close to 20 years and am currently a market gardener teaching horticulture at tertiary level. I seek your support to be elected to the Taranaki Regional Council as a strong advocate for the climate, our struggling provincial communities and to protect the ocean from seabed mining. I support the retention of the Māori wards as a step towards Te Tiriti justice and encourage you to vote in favour of the Māori wards. My top priorities are supporting farmers to shift to regenerative agricultural systems for local markets, expanding public transport and improving the health of our rivers, land and sea. Given the state of our planet, it is time for transformative change. We need grassroots and collective solutions for a just, fair and regenerative future.
Regenerative Agriculture
In order to stop catastrophic climate change, we need to urgently bring down our emissions. With almost 50% of Aotearoa's emissions coming from the agricultural industry, it is vital that we radically change our farming practices from intensive to extensive, from entropic to syntropic, from degenerative to regenerative. While the way we farm has had a significant negative impact on the environment, we can change the way we do things and start to sequester carbon, diversify production, reforest many parts of the region and ensure that the social, environmental and economic spheres start to align again.
Public Transport
We need urgent action to improve our public transport network. Public transport has numerous benefits: it connects people and communities, enables the poor the get around easier, drastically reduces our emissions and de-congests roads. While there have been some improvements in recent years such as the introduction of The Connector service linking Te Hāwera and New Plymouth, we need a lot more investment and support, particularly for rural South Taranaki. I am passionate about public transport and want to see a well-designed, frequent and affordable public transport network for our whole region.
Swimmable Rivers
We all know that Taranaki's rivers, creeks and wetlands are really struggling. For too long, the impacts of agriculture have meant that our kids have not been able to swim in many rivers around the mountain. We need to work together to bring about change to farming practices to ensure that all waterways are protected to the highest standard. 76% of indigenous freshwater fish species (39 of 51) are currently threatened with extinction or at risk of becoming threatened. Clean rivers ensures that we can turn this statistic around.
