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The government yesterday expressed concern over the increasing wave of investors illegally buying large chunks of land from villagers for forest farming and management, apparently to engage in carbon trade.

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.

Forests provide multiple benefits at local to global scales. These include the global public good of carbon sequestration and local and national level contributions to livelihoods for more than half a billion users.

Africa’s first significant CDM forest carbon project has attracted a price of $US4 per tonne in temporary CER (tCER) carbon credits, according to a media report. The World Bank will buy the credits for half the carbon stored up to 2017 from an Ethiopian forestry project, the Humbo Assisted Natural Regeneration Project.

The Centre should promote a carbon credit trading mechanism on lines of the Kyoto Protocol in the country to enable the plantation industry to earn carbon credits.