sinks

A PROPOSAL to keep Tasmania's native forests standing in exchange for billions in carbon credits has been rejected by the State Government, Liberal Opposition and Forestry Tasmania.

Tropical forests across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia stored 247 gigatons of carbon — more than 30 years' worth of current emissions from fossil fuels use — in the early 2000s, according to a comprehensive assessment of the world's carbon stocks.

Growing trees is nature’s way of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.  So most would assume that the forest industry would be front and centre of the government’s climate change policy.  They’d be wrong. 

The government’s carbon price to be introduced from July 2012 will rightly focus on the big emitters but will provide next to no incentives for growth in Australia’s sustainable forest industry – which absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere.

--the following appeared as a guest commentary in Carbon Market Europe, Thomson Reuters Point Carbon on February 25, 2011--

Closing the deal on forest accounting
By Chris Henschel, national manager of boreal conservation, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

Mark it on your calendar: the UN climate change conference in South Africa this December will deliver an agreement on the accountability of industrialised countries for their emissions from forest management and other land uses (LULUCF).

Wanganui hill country farmers have a massive opportunity to use the Emissions Trading Scheme to get a return from their marginal land, Pat Hawinkels says.

"Internationally, the market for carbon is huge and it will just get bigger."

People registering their forests in the Emissions Trading Scheme get money for growing trees, which store carbon.

Registering for the scheme was only complex the first time, he said, and for some the money would keep a marginal farm viable.