Helping to make carbon farming easier
Landowners are missing out on millions of dollars in carbon credits because of the hassle in becoming carbon farmers.
That's the conclusion of a discussion paper, written by former Hastings Mayor and MP Lawrence Yule - Managing Forestry Land-Use Under the Influence of Carbon. It calls for a more strategic approach to planting trees and outlines policy areas in need of urgent investigation.
Co-funded by Beef+Lamb NZ, along with Local Government New Zealand and 16 individual councils, the paper looks into the drivers of wholesale land-use change for carbon farming and what can be done about this issue.
Yule says the paper outlines the risk that short-term land-use decisions around forestry will have to long-term land-use, flexibility, rural communities and export returns.
"Currently, increasing carbon prices in New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) means carbon farming coupled with plantation forestry is in the short-term significantly more profitable than sheep and beef cattle farming," he claims.
"There is little national guidance to help local authorities stop swathes of productive sheep, beef and wool producing farmland being converted to forestry."
Yule says the ETS currently allows 100% of NZ's fossil fuel emissions to be offset through forestry and councils have no available tools to place controls on the planting of trees.
He adds that the country has relied heavily on carbon sequestration through plantation forestry to meet its international obligations to reduce climate emissions, rather than actually reducing gross emissions from all sectors.
"We cannot simply plant our way out of our climate change obligations," Yule claims. "New Zealand's recent history of reducing gross fossil fuel emissions has been poor and there is a risk that the current unconstrained offsetting regime will continue to accelerate highly productive food-producing land going to forestry."
He adds that recent changes to the ETS averaging rules, incentivise carbon-only planting and there is a lack of rules around how permanent carbon farms should be properly managed.
The paper identifies options for strategically managing the increased planting required to meet New Zealand's international commitments to reduce climate emissions.
Sam McIvor, chief executive of B+LNZ, says the organisation welcomes signals that the Government is considering policy changes to address the wholesale conversion of sheep and beef farmland into carbon farming.
"However, the Government's action has been too slow - the time to act is now," he says. "We have been raising concerns for some time about the speed and scale of land-use change due to the unbridled ability of fossil fuel emitters to plant exotic trees on sheep and beef farmland for offsetting - rather than reducing their emissions."
McIvor says B+LNZ is not anti-plantation forestry and has always seen significant opportunities for the integration of exotic and native trees on-farm. "But this should not come at the expense of rural communities."
He adds that NZ is the only country in the world with an ETS that currently allows unlimited forestry offsetting - with both the Climate Change Commission and the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommending that limits be set. "The Government needs to change the ETS because that is the legislation that's causing the problem," McIvor says.
The paper was released ahead of a workshop next month involving a range of key stakeholders, including Forestry Minister Stuart Nash, councils, forestry interests and B+LNZ. It is hoped that this research will help shape future policies.
