The National Policy Statement for HighlyProductive Land (NPS-HPL) came into effect in October 2022. This policy is about ensuring the availability of New Zealand’s most favourable soils for food and fibre production, now and for future generations. The policy provides direction to improve the way highly productive land is managed under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). That means the country's most fertile and versatile land is not allowed to be rezoned for industrial use or urban development if the land was farmed within the last 5 years. Whilst the government is extremely focused on renewable energy projects, large-scale industrial solar plants have many ecological risks associated to them which are not being addressed or adequately debated within these fast-track resource consent applications which developers have been allowed to use to forward their agenda without adequate debate and assessments of all the risks.