Another week goes by and another farm in this country sells to permanent forestry and taking advantage of the current ETS settings. In just a matter of weeks more than 7,000 ha alone have been sold to international companies for the sole purpose of farming carbon. One is the parent company of Ikea and a Swiss company is another. You have to ask yourself the question, are the current ETS settings and in particular the unlimited offsetting opportunities is in the best interest of New Zealand’s future?
This week Gary Taylor from the Environmental Defence Society joins me to give his views on this all-important challenge we face. The Environmental Defence Society or EDS, was founded 51 years ago, with an aim of bringing together the disciplines of law and science.
The Government is about to release a review of the national environmental standards for plantation forestry, so I asked Taylor what can we expect from it’s release. “I'm expecting there to be a shift towards more requirements for resource consents, for forests rather than having permitted activity status, you know, everywhere. And I'm also expecting in conjunction with the with the National Policy Statement on freshwater management a tightening of controls around erosion and sediment and in slash, my position is that I think that forests or the forest sector as a whole has had a bit of a free ride up until now in terms of its environmental performance.”
Taylor also pointed out that the expansion of permanent exotic carbon forests poses a threat to to small rural communities because they're essentially plant and walk away forests, “So I think that this whole notion of large scale permanent exotic forests is something that we need to nip in the bud.”
I asked Taylor whether the Government's decision to not ban permanent exotic forests from the ETS at this point in time is a good one, “No I don't, actually it's a non-decision because what they've decided is to not make a decision at the stage and defer it. The problem is the first of January 2023, that's coming around and unless there is a change the default position will be that permanent exotics will be enabled through the ETS I don't think that's good, both for broader environmental reasons, but also too much carbon sequestration really mitigates against real emission reductions. And the purpose of the ETS is to drive permanent real gross emission reductions across the economy to decarbonize the economy, the purpose of the ETS is not to support a carbon forestry industry.
“I think the other problem too is that with too much carbon farming, the price is going to go down and the incentives to make real reductions are going to diminish as well.”
It’s important to remember that Taylor leads an organisation driving for better environmental outcomes, The Environmental Defence Society is a non-profit organisation dedicated to achieving better environmental outcomes, they are not a farmer or industry lead group. They see the problems with carbon farming clearly, carbon farming and afforestation does not actually drive or incentivise real change, carbon farms are an exotic monoculture that decimate small rural communities and deprive them of jobs, and impact this counties ability to produce food and impacts the all-important export dollar.
Another interesting point Taylor made was how large areas of hill country are being stripped of stabilising vegetation for several years between forestry cycles, this is exacerbating run-off volumes and flooding, as well as vastly increasing sediment loads, entering the coastal marine area. Sediment from forestry as it turns out smothers and kills marine life. Forestry plays an important role in farming systems without question, but trees have their place and clearly the forestry industry has some way to go to improve it’s environmental footprint.
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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.
14 Comments
We're still only making the initial baby-step into our initial Kyoto commitments. The sh** gets real further down the timeline, and carbon related costs will start to bite everywhere. One way or another people are going to be forced to pay for anything with embedded fossil energy in its production/transportation/storage. The more CO2 credits washing through the system the less this will cost everyone. The fewer the credits, the higher the price to be paid by us all.
What probably matters most is whether we'd be better off without those Ikea dollars and keeping the CO2 credit dollars within NZ, or taking the money now from Ikea, and letting them ship the CO2 profits offshore.
As usual, people tend too gravitate towards what gives them money NOW, rather than later. In the case of an elderly farmer who's spent his life strapped to the bank via the farm mortgage it seems a sensible choice - take the money now, ease into a well earned retirement, and spend those dollars while you're still alive to do so.
I'm starting to sound like a grumpy old codger around the dinner table these days. Why is it that every single central government initiative these days seems to be actively trying to destroy the place? And anyone opposed to them gets tarred with the same brush - you must be a racist, a far-right conspiracy theorist, don't care about the environment, hate minorities, etc.
I've never really been seriously worried about the future of this country, but I sure as hell am now. And judging by recent polls, I'm not the only one.
Yeah, interventions distort. Nothing new there.
It strikes me that there is at least one big flaw in pure capitalism - polluters don't pay. So I can see why govts are having a go with the distortion of carbon credits. And it incentivises exotic forest with downsides as per article. So what next, tweak the distortion and only earn credits for native forest or something. But doesn't address the rural decline downside, for those who care about that.
The polluters do pay (except for international travel and the likes of Tiwai smelter), but for a pure market solution the price of carbon credits would need to triple at least . That is not politically possible , in order to ensure cross party support for the ETS , Shaw agreed to cap the nz carbon credit cost by auction process. ( if the price is going up they release more credits, we will pay in the long term ).
And then there is the biggest polluter of all, joe blog's private automobile , and the trucks that deliver our goods. Neither major political party is going to attack that symbol of western freedom in a meaningful way .
Strangely, the market proponents fall silent when the market solution doesn't suit their interests.
Need to get Garys comments on the 1,000,000 ha of farmland that needs to go into permanent forest of some type.
He would be best to concentrate on doing this and stopping the millions of tonnes of sediment going into waterways and the ocean.
Pay also to read the law about what people can and cant do - selective reading and listening it seems.
If you want the latest Monty Python script read the report from Wairoa/Gisborne councils on the farm damage from storms earlier this year - how do we get back to doing the same we were before the storm - unbelievable stupidity. I was rung by the lovely lady doing this survey to see how our forest was - no problems there - but the horror stories she passed onto me from the calls she had made were not pleasant. You can understand why mental health is such an issue when your leaders tell you to do it all over again.
Oh well as climate events increase and intensity increases the problem will just be washed away - literally.
Never been sure about Gary Taylor.
After Cyclone Bola , I went on a steam train trip from Napier to Gisborne. Onboard was a film maker , partly filming the train , but mostly filming the damage to the hills. Briefly chatting to him , he said they were making a doco to present to the regional council .
Years later , I was doing some solar work for him , and we remembered we were both on the train. I asked him how the doco went down , waste of f'ing time was his response.
Bollocks! It's not the fact exotics are being planted, it's the fact foreign entities can march in, plant monocultures, walk away and pocket a large fortune, virtually for free! Exotics have their place and should be able to be regarded as permanent forest. My own plans are to plant mixed species and selectively log and replant as trees mature. There will be a major demand for quality timber that is not Radiata rubbish in the future. Why should I be penalised because the government is too pathetic to say no to corporate colonisation? Just say no to radiata monocultures planted by non resident entities!
WTF, it was only a few years ago a few elite Aucklanders were tearing out vast swathes of pines north of Taupo, so they could take landcorp for a ride in converting to dairy. Neo liberal economic reforms and the resulting corporatisation of agriculture and land speculation is what has gutting rural communities.
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