Cuts of NZ$115 million bring an end to several major programmes
Funding for grassroots, environmental and emerging science has been hit by a round of government budget cuts, with the Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways research funding reforms also officially shelved.
An announcement on 19 March from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said that effective immediately, three funds would be discontinued: the Unlocking Curious Minds student science programme, the Participatory Science Platform for citizen science and the Partnerships Scheme.
In addition, no further funding will go to the Strategic Science Investment Fund’s allocation to kauri dieback disease and myrtle rust, via a project overseen by Landcare Research and delivered by the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge, which will conclude this month. A research leader said that the decision on the kauri programme risked “stalling research progress” and “jeopardising key research capabilities”, with a potential impact on more than 100 staff.
Some “underspent” amounts in the government agency Callaghan Innovation’s programme, including for student funding, New to R&D Grants and Ārohia Trailblazer Grants, will also be clawed back.
And on 22 March, the ministry issued a formal notice thanking stakeholders for their work on the Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways funding reforms, which had already been declared cancelled by science minister Judith Collins.
All current projects will run their existing terms.
Cuts could ‘cost society dearly’
The government said the cuts would help deliver the NZ$115.28 million in savings from the research, science and innovation portfolio foreshadowed in a decision in August last year by then finance minister Grant Robertson.
It said the funds were “uncommitted at the point of the savings [decision] being taken” by the cabinet.
On 20 March, the Unlocking Curious Minds fund wrote to stakeholders to inform them that no further rounds would be run. That programme will end in June, as will the Participatory Science Platform, whose closure had been announced late last year. Current funding for the Partnerships Scheme runs to the end of June 2025.
Unlocking Curious Minds was set up in 2014 to encourage young people to practise science. Although it was initially established with a 10-year timeframe, there had been no recent suggestion of it shutting down.
New Zealand Association of Scientists co-president Troy Baisden said the cuts raised concerns about Callaghan Innovation and about funding across the sector ahead of the May budget.
“Programmes and institutions with fixed funding have faced considerable inflation with no net increases in support, so we hope that some support will be reallocated to allow for the increases in costs. Otherwise, cuts above and beyond the 7.5 per cent cuts being made [in] the public service seem likely within research institutions.”
Cuts to Unlocking Curious Minds and the Participatory Science Platform raise the risk of “losing social cohesion on issues from climate change to vaccination…accompanied by backsliding of levels of trust and a sense of opportunity in science. These programmes were not expensive and achieved a lot that could be lost, quite possibly costing our society dearly in the long run,” Baisden warned.
He added that the Partnerships Scheme’s aims appeared “to match the aspirations the new minister [Collins] seeks, so it will be important to watch upcoming announcements through the budget to see if these types of initiatives will be supported in a new way”.
Departmental response
Answering questions from Research Professional News, Danette Olsen, the ministry’s general manager of science system investment and performance, said the savings had been initiated in 2023 by the previous government.
She said that “a total of NZ$115.28m over four years from the research, science and innovation portfolio” was being saved. This includes NZ$4.8m from Unlocking Curious Minds, NZ$3.6m from the Participatory Science Platform, NZ$30m over four years of unallocated Strategic Science Investment Fund money and NZ$11m “over four years of unallocated funding that was previously tagged to the now inactive Partnerships Scheme”.
Olsen said that the Partnerships Scheme had been inactive since 2018, “with the existing contracted programmes naturally concluding over the next two financial years”.
Of the NZ$115.28m, around NZ$65.8m comes from Callaghan Innovation, made up of NZ$33m from the New to R&D Grants, NZ$24.4m from the Ārohia Trailblazer programme and NZ$8.5m from student R&D grants.
Kauri research
Olsen said that because funding was already slated to end, the cuts have “no impact on Ngā Rākau Taketake, the existing Strategic Science Investment Fund research programme focused on kauri dieback and myrtle rust, hosted by Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research. This programme will end in March 2024 as planned.”
“Separate to this, Biosecurity NZ in collaboration with the Department of Conservation host Tiakina Kauri, a kauri protection programme,” she said.
However, Daniel Patrick, co-director of the Biological Heritage National Science Challenge, said that “while the conclusion of Ngā Rākau Taketake was always known, scheduled for 30 March 2024, there was hope that there would be continued support for strategic research into these two plant diseases beyond that date”.
In a joint statement with co-director Mel Mark-Shadbolt, Patrick said the decision meant there was now no clear strategy for funding kauri research.
They said that they had been told there was “government funding for kauri dieback research post-Ngā Rākau Taketake tagged in the ministry’s baseline, but this was not committed, and in August 2023 this was removed from the baseline funding”.
“Fortunately, Tiakina Kauri, the government’s kauri protection agency, exists and has funding to manage the operational response to kauri dieback and maintain momentum in the fight to protect kauri forests. The question we have is who will maintain momentum in the fight to protect our myrtaceae from the impacts of myrtle rust?” the statement said.
“We would argue that Ngā Rākau Taketake offered pathways to safeguard our biodiversity and enhance our biosecurity system, and while there are still research gaps and challenges to manage, ongoing research efforts are as vital now as they were in 2018 if we want to avoid mass tree loss.”
They said there would also be a flow-on effect on collaboration across the sector, “fracturing relationships between researchers, tangata whenua [knowledge holders], communities, agencies and industry” and potentially affecting agriculture, tourism, culture and general wellbeing.
The decision could leave “iwi [Māori tribes], communities, industry and councils with the burden of managing these diseases but without any support or resourcing”.