Australia

BOULDER, CO and QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA, Sep 20, 2010 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- ECO2 Forests Inc. () today announced the addition of Biomass for Renewable Energy Power Generation to the products to be derived from Kiri Tree forest operations.

New Zealand's sheep farmers are flocking to a government carbon trading program that pays more to plant trees than sell wool and mutton.

The system, begun in 2008 and the only one of its kind outside Europe, awards farmers credits that are sold to offset greenhouse gas emissions. The project may earn them about $NZ600 a hectare ($193 per acre) a year on land unprofitable for grazing animals, said David Evison, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury's New Zealand School of Forestry.

POLITICIANS of all persuasions have had a hard time being nice to farmers in ways that don’t upset larger, more vociferous and vindictive sections of the voting public.

In this campaign, they seem to have discovered the key: carbon!

The former Rudd Government's Emissions Trading Scheme has been all but swept under the carpet, with neither Julia Gillard's government or the Opposition committing to such a scheme.

If or when the idea of a carbon tax returns to Australian politics, there's one form of renewable energy that many in Australia's forestry industry want government to consider.

AMONG THE MANY NASTY things that humans are doing to the environment, few rank worse than destroying tropical forests. Rainforests sustain an astonishing diversity of species and keep our planet liveable by limiting soil erosion, reducing floods, maintaining natural water cycles, and stabilising the climate. Yet roughly 10 million hectares of tropical forest are destroyed every year – the equivalent of 50 football fields a minute.