John Lord
There is currently discussion about a carbon credit scheme that would reward native forest owners.
On the face of it, this seems like a good idea because actively managed native forests sequester the majority of the carbon sequestered by the nation’s forestry sector.
However, the idea being considered is that the scheme would apply where the forest owners ceased actively managing their forests.
To me, this is not a good idea.
Does anyone remember the brochure prepared nearly two decades ago by the Commonwealth Government’s own Forests and Wood Products Research and Development Corporation (now the FWPA) along with the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting? It’s called Forests, Wood and Australia’s Carbon Balance. It’s well written and illustrated and could be found on the web by Googling that name.
The brochure I have is the original, written using industry data from 2004. (I believe there is a more recently written update and also that recent research reinforces the research behind the original brochure.)
The researchers divided the nations forests into plantations (plantations), native forests actively managed for commercial purposes (commercial forests) and native forests such as in national parks and conservation reserves that will not be harvested (conservation forests).
The researchers found that at that time, approximately three quarters of the forestry sector’s Australia’s net sink of carbon was in and from commercial forests, the rest being in and from plantations.
The authors conducted extensive research into the ultimate fate of the carbon embedded in harvested forest products. This included doing things like digging up old tips to see to what extent the embedded carbon in buried waste wood and paper had been released back into the atmosphere.
The authors’ conclusions included that where forests in Australia are actively managed by periodic harvesting, with the harvested forest then being allowed to regrow (commercial forests), then in the longer term these forests sequester twice the amount of carbon compared with conservation forests.
Our family have for many decades practiced active management of our native forests where the active management has taken the form of periodic selective harvesting, which is the removal of part of the forest cover.
Our belief is that in doing this we achieve true triple bottom line wins.
For the environment this includes ensuring the biodiversity present in the forest is retained in a healthy state and the fuel load is periodically reduced to assist in the event of wildfires. Socially, these activities provide regular employment for those involved in harvesting, transport and processing of the forest products removed and support our state’s diversified demographic.
The economic win is that we assist our state’s economy by providing a sustainably produced economic resource.
Perhaps our leaders should read this brochure, to see whether current thinking is still in accord with the research outcomes contained within it.
Rewarding good forest management, including the management of our nation’s native forests for their net annual sink of carbon is a great idea, but, please, let’s do this properly.
John Lord is a tree farmer at Longford in Tasmania and was National Treefarmer of the Year in 2005 and Tasmania Treefarmer of the Year in 2006.
