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 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.
--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).
'This could really take off,'' said Ross Garnaut this week, releasing his latest update paper on Transforming Rural Land Use. ''This could be seriously big.''
Australia can meet carbon targets by land offsets: report
A new report on Thursday said Australia can meet its carbon emissions target by doing nothing more than claiming offsets from re-vegetation of cleared land, regional forest agreements and ending logging of native forests.
Australia has set its target of a 5 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2020, and the study said the federal government has deliberately underestimated these land offsets to justify a weak target in international negotiations.
London – The UK said it will opt out of a common European Union platform for auctioning carbon permits in the next phase of the bloc's emissions-trading programme, which starts in 2013, and will develop a national system instead.
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.
