market Plantings 'answer to Kyoto deficit'

New Zealand can turn around its estimated $500 million Kyoto protocol carbon deficit if it moves quickly to implement policies to encourage the planting of more trees, say forest owners.


A combined grouping of the New Zealand Forest Owners Association, the Federation of Maori Authorities, the Kyoto Forestry Association and the NZ Farm Forestry Association – representing about 80 per cent of the plantation forestry industry – has sent a brochure to all members of Parliament in which it calls for the establishment of a carbon market and the removal of the deforestation cap.

Forest owners can help New Zealand meet its Kyoto obligations – saving many hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process – if they are financially encouraged to plant more trees, Forest Owners president Peter Berg said.

"They are keen to once again start planting more trees and have the potential to expand the area in forestry by 60,000 to 70,000 hectares a year – the area needed to meet the Kyoto targets," he said. "This figure was exceeded in the 1990s and is achievable now."

Under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, countries are required to wind back their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. Countries can achieve this by either reducing their emissions, planting more trees to earn carbon credits or buying carbon credits from other countries.

When New Zealand ratified the protocol in 2003 it was thought that the growing area of plantation forests would allow the country not only to meet its Kyoto targets but also to earn a windfall of carbon credits. But because of increasing energy and transport emissions and a steep fall in forest planting, the Treasury now estimates that New Zealand faces a deficit of at least $522 million for the first Kyoto commitment period of 2008-12.

"In order to balance our carbon ledger we can start buying carbon credits from other countries like Russia now or we can adopt policies which recognise the value created by forest owners when their trees store carbon," Mr Berg said. "I think most New Zealanders would think the choice was simple."

AdvertisementAdvertisementMr Berg said that though forestry had the potential to help New Zealand turn around its Kyoto deficit, current government policy had unfairly penalised the industry and seriously eroded the confidence of existing and potential forestry investors.

The two current policies that forest owners want to see reversed are the nationalisation of carbon credits – which means the Government rather than forest owners earn credits when new trees are planted – and the deforestation cap, a tax imposed on forest owners for not replanting forests planted before 1990 after harvest.

The nationalisation of carbon credits means the Government has taken ownership of the carbon generated by New Zealand forests planted since 1990 and will use that to offset the country's Kyoto deficit.

Mr Berg said that policy should be reversed and a carbon market should be set up, similar to those in operation in Europe, allowing forest owners to earn carbon credits by trading with polluting industries.



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