Opinion by J B Smith
Legislation limiting controversial farm-to-forestry conversions has been introduced to parliament but the forestry industry doesn’t like it.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Environment Select Committee reported back to the House on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme—Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill.
New Zealand Forestry Owners Association was predictably downbeat.
Its chief executive Dr Elizabeth Heeg said restrictions within the bill created significant uncertainty and would make it harder for the industry to get more trees in the ground.
And trees in the ground we need was the cry of the association.
But do we need more pines?
Introducing the bill, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Todd McClay said carbon farming was intruding into New Zealand’s food production.
“For too long, productive sheep and beef farms have been replaced by pine trees in the race for carbon credits. That ends under this Government,” he said.
“This policy is pro-farming, pro-food production, pro-commercial forestry and pro-rural New Zealand.”
Pine Weeds
Pine trees are regarded in some quarters as weeds.
And “weeds” they are when wilding pines begin to trespass from forests across farmland. The recent resignation of Molesworth Station’s manager reportedly over the wilding pine threats to the big iconic beef farm underlined what is happening in the high country.
They are an environmental disaster not only as seed banks for wilding pine spread but also in depleting streams and rivers of their flow.
A study in 2005 showed “about 30% less water flowed from the mature pine plantation than the pasture.” Reportedly a 12-inch diameter tree will absorb nearly 120 gallons of water.
There are also records that “the average pine tree can absorb up to 150 gallons of water a day when there is unlimited water.”
In the lead-up to the 2017 election campaign, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern called climate change “my generation’s nuclear free moment”. It was extravagant rhetoric.
But it its not only Ardern to blame.
It was back in September 2008 New Zealand’s ETS was first legislated in the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading) Amendment Act 2008 by the Fifth Labour Government of New Zealand led by Prime Minister Helen Clark. Labour was defeated at the election in late 2008.
The ETS was then amended in November 2009 and in November 2012 by the Fifth National Government of New Zealand led by Prime Minister John Key.
The ETS under amendments then devolved (degenerated) into a free market trading system where carbon credits could be “wheeled and dealt” – in other words an arena for investing speculators, intent on maximum profits and dividends to share holders.
the ardern government relaxed too to the point of invitation, the restrictions on foreign investment for carbon farmers.
Environmental considerations like diminishing bio-diversity, wilding pines and depleted river and stream flows are not of concern.
Big business which emit carbon – a factor in climate change – can choose to reduce carbon emissions at source or they can offset those emissions by buying carbon credits.
The latter is their preference. That has led to the method of planting trees in large quantities, to act as a carbon sink.
Pine trees are the obvious answer from a speculator’s viewpoint, as they’re quick growing – compared to native trees – and quickly attain a height of five metres.
Grossly Flawed
ETS’s basis is grossly flawed as “to qualify as forest land in the ETS, the trees in the forest must be species that can reach at least 5 metres in height.” That’s double the height of a standard ceiling.
Why five metres?
With native vegetation, some 70 species would be excluded from carbon sequestering assessments. Examples are the many species of coprosmas, hoheria, manuka, muehlenbecka, the several species of pittosporums and others.
As such the basis for the ETS is grossly illogically and absurdly flawed.
As for the pines, the effects are all negative. Some others are loss of productive farm land, loss of people in rural communities, pollen health risk, loss of wildlife biodiversity, loss of access to high country as foreign speculators invariably erected locked gates.
A comment on facebook tells the sorry tale.
Three prime ministers Clark, Key and Ardern have stuffed things up and created the wilding pine problem and the slash problem that has stuffed east coast beaches and caused the death iof a youngster. The ETS is a load of b—sh–.
The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on carbon. It’s a market-based system where certain sectors of the economy must purchase permits (or “units”) for the emissions they release. While some support the ETS, many others argue it’s ineffective, costly, or even counterproductive and environmentally damaging. Get rid of the ETS.
New Zealand’s percentage of global CO2 emissions is 0.0078 per cent. that says it. It’s like that Peter Sellers film, “The Mouse that Roared.”
Such a minute contribution has no real relevance whatsoever to ‘international obligations, since those obligations are ignored everywhere in the world, by the big emitters.
Not only is carbon farming using up valuable productive land sub divisions and lifestyle blocks are invading prime horticultural land.