Forestry to play a more diverse role in bioeconomyFriday 25 Jun 2021
The Climate Change Commission is recommending to New Zealand’s Government significant changes in how we use trees. Its proposals will deliver gains to our economy. But they fall short of the much greater benefits delivered by genuine Nature based Solutions. These are deeply integrated approaches to tackling humankind’s co-crises of climate and ecosystems. New Zealand has arguably more scope to use such solutions, and to derive greater benefit from them, than many countries. In my column last week I summarised the case for them and focused on their application in agriculture, which was a critical climate response the Commission has ignored. This column focuses on forestry here and the burgeoning work abroad on Nature based Solutions. “Plant and pollute” was the succinct summary of our existing approach to trees as carbon sinks Rod Carr, chair of the Commission, gave to a carbon forestry conference in Rotorua on Wednesday. In other words, we’ve planted lots of trees but we’ve kept increasing our emissions. More formally, the Commission says in its final recommendations to government: “Relying heavily on forestry might help Aotearoa meet its 2050 emissions reduction targets but it would make maintaining net zero long-lived emissions beyond that date more difficult. It would delay people taking actions that reduce gross emissions, lead to higher cumulative emissions and push the burden of addressing gross emissions on to future generations.” Along the way, excessive tree planting would also reduce our land use options. Various problems create our dysfunctional approach to carbon sequestration to date. Crucially, radiata pine, which account for the bulk of our plantings, grow and absorb carbon quickly in their early decades. But we harvest most of them in typically their third decade; replanting pines only restores the carbon lost from harvesting rather than increasing our sequestration; and even if the pines are in permanent forests, they store minimal carbon in their later decades and have far shorter lives than native species. Thus, the Commission recommends we plant more exotics like radiata pine to capture more carbon in coming decades but sharply ramp up our plantings of natives to ensure our longer-term sequestration. To achieve both goals, it advocates a range of changes in existing mechanisms such as the Emissions Trading Scheme and the creation of new policies and programmes. The forestry sector is up for the challenge, judging by the views and mood of presenters and delegates at the carbon forestry conference. (Disclosure: I was a presenter). Strategies of some leading forestry companies are already based on these themes. New Zealand Carbon Farming, for example, plants radiata pine to store carbon but not to harvest them. Over the decades, it will manage its plantations so they gradually revert to native forests. So far, it has 90,000 ha of forests, half of which it owns and half it manages for other land owners. The trees have stored 22 million tonnes of carbon to date, with $95 m paid to landowning partners. This year it will begin its first plantation projects in Australia and the US. The company is the largest provider of carbon credits in Australasia, with most buyers doing so to meet their regulatory obligations. But some are voluntary buyers who are taking responsibility for their carbon footprints. They are often keen on NZ credits because of six quality attributes that forests have here to varying degrees, Matt Walsh, NZCF's managing director and its co-founder with Bruce Miller, told the conference. These are a permanent forests category in the ETS; reversion from exotics to natives; native plantings; biodiversity benefits; social benefits; and community benefits. Voluntary buyers will often pay a premium over the basic compliance price established by the ETS, Sean Weaver, chief executive and founder of Ekos, told the conference. Ekos grows and protects indigenous forests here and in the Pacific Islands. It sells carbon credits in them once the forests are certified either under the ETS or Plan Vivo, a Scottish-based organisation that created the world's first carbon credits in 1997. More >>. Source; newsroom.co.nz Note: We are aware that there was some confusion among some of the delegates who attended the Carbon Forestry 2021 event last week in Rotorua, New Zealand about the term averaging accounting. Averaging accounting is a new method to account for carbon storage in forests registered in the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). From 2023 all newly registered post-1989 forests must use averaging accounting unless they are registered as a permanent forest. Following their presentation at the event last week Te Uru Rākau – New Zealand Forest Service has pointed to the following fact sheet on their website to help aid understanding of averaging accounting. Fact sheet: Introduction to averaging carbon accounting for forests in the Emissions Trading Scheme There will be further communications from Te Uru Rākau – New Zealand Forest Service once final decisions about averaging accounting, including how it applies to second and future rotation forests, have been made. | ||
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