Special report
Converting top pasture to carbon farming of pines
Forestry should be phased out of New Zealand’s “rudderless” Emissions Trading Scheme reports Radio NZ, because it is allowing climate pollution to continue, the country’s environmental watchdog says.
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Simon Upton is calling for the scheme to be overhauled, with a moratorium on allowing new forests to earn carbon credits in the meantime.
The government has said the emissions trading scheme (ETS), which puts a price on each tonne of greenhouse gases, should be the main tool for driving down New Zealand’s emissions.
Cheap Way
But in a report tabled recently in Parliament, Upton said it had massively incentivised the planting of forests to offset carbon over the years, at the expense of real reductions in emissions.
“What we’ve done is incentivised a cheap way out,” he told RNZ.
The former architects of the scheme – including himself – “didn’t think hard enough” about the long-term dangers of encouraging vast new plantations of highly flammable, storm-prone pine.
Simon Upton wrote of the “unease” he now felt talking to East Coast hill-country farmers watching land around them transformed into carbon forestry.
Remove Them
The recommendations stopped short of removing forestry from the scheme completely, but Simon Upton wrote that, in his view, it should be.
The Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations chairman Andi Cockroft said the environmental impact of monocultures of pines was to the detriment of stream flows and stream health.
One estimate says pine trees consume significantly more water than native forests or open grassland reducing overall stream flow and groundwater recharge up to 40 percent.
“A common rule of thumb estimates that a pine tree drinks about 10 gallons (38 litres) of water per day for every single inch of its trunk’s diameter. For example, a 12-inch wide pine absorbs roughly 120 gallons (454 litres) a day,” says one source.
Streams that once flowed all-year round are now dry in late summer and autumn, due to the establishment of pine monocultures.
The small tributary streams are the first to suffer from thirsty pines and they are vital for trout spawning to naturally sustain the fishery.
Those small streams are the habitat of native fresh-water creatures from fish to koura crayfish and invertebrates, which raises the question where is the Department of Conservation who by the act of parliament are charged with the responsibility of protecting native freshwater life?
Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Simon Upton must wonder if he’s talking to a brick wall with this government. They just don’t give a toss about the environment. But then Ardern and Hipkins did nothing. The green POarty is preoccupied with social engineering. Sad times for the people’s environment.
Quick-fixes never work in environmental management. This is a classic example.
All good for for for the fat cats that own the pines, but never held accountable for the destruction they also cause,.
Another topic in regards to pines is public health, the pollen from the pines is like a wrecking ball, everything is mated with the yellow pollen, but nobody mentions the health problems associated to this mess, governments certainly don’t want to know.