« Transmission Gully
Green House Emissions from Agriculture »

Copenhagen Agreement

NZ PM John Key

NZ PM John Key

“I am actually confident we will get a high level political agreement and I think that will leave us more work in 2010 to tie up the pieces,” said PM John Key on Newstalk ZB. New Zealand is looking to have plantation forestry better recognised in global climate treaties.

When we harvest pine plantations, the extracted timber, which is 50% solid carbon, is usually treated and used in building, furniture, etc – locking up what otherwise would have been atmospheric carbon for a long time. But this locking up in processed timber is yet to be formally recognised in global treaties. The New Zealand team to the Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009 have as an objective to obtain recognition for the long-term locking up of carbon in processed timber from plantations. Prime Minister Key says they will seek agreement for 70% of the carbon credits given to a mature stand of trees to be retained post-harvest in the timber.  They will also seek changes to the LULUCF rules (Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry) to allow more flexibility in the felling and replanting of trees in different areas. We wish them good LUUUCK.

In recent years, new plantings of trees in New Zealand have reduced dramatically as financial returns have fallen. Russia has become more active in supplying the world with timber from its vast natural resources. The mind boggles at the global warming consequences of this. Some of the permafrost forests take centuries to re-establish.

The theory is though that the Russians can’t keep it up forever. As their logging faces get farther and farther away from transport infrastructure like rail-heads and ports, their costs should go up. But at home in New Zealand the effect has been to dampen profitability of the forestry sector. Log prices have pretty much slid sideways, in some cases even downwards, for the last decade. That’s tough when cost inflation is running around 2% pa compound, or about 15% over the decade.

So the much discussed Emissions Trading Scheme, if, but more likely when, it gets underway, will hopefully provide a timely and welcome boost to tree planting activity. Under such a scheme foresters will finally be able to generate some personal economic benefit for the good work they are doing in locking up atmospheric carbon.

New Zealand Forest Owners Association President Peter Berg notes

Policy certainty is vitally important when you are planting a forest – it’s a long-term enterprise with a lot of the investment costs up front. You can’t have policy swerves, about-faces and second thoughts with a crop that is going to take at least 30 years to reach maturity. It is in the interests of everyone around the world that forest owners are provided with a rational, stable, investment environment so they can get on with growing trees. Sustainably managed forest plantations, when established on previously non-forested land, can make a huge contribution toward mitigating climate change.  

Post to Twitter

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 9:53 pm and is filed under 100% Pure New Zealand, Clean & Green, Forestry, Kaitiakitanga, Tourism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Copenhagen Agreement”

  1. Doug Johansen says:
    December 17, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    One thing Tony I have never been against the pines but was totally opposed to felling our Native forests to put in the pines and I tell all overseas tourists this as if we did not have our pine plantations they would still be wanting to fell our Native forests.

    Today most of our plantation forests are owned by overseas companies who could not care less about our enviroment Tony where our New Zealand Forest Service did and were much more responsible.

    It is up to our government to tell these companies that they have a responsibility to New Zealand to look after our enviroment and to give them guidlines they must adhere to as it is our country not theirs.

    We need minimum 50meter buffer zones around roadsides to hide the mess and as well alongside creeks and any waterways to protect downstream values as runoff is horriffic in floods from felled areas and also they should be felling much smaller areas and then allowing these places to be planted up before felling nearby.

    Another thing is that some areas being felled are far to steep, some over 40 degrees here in the Coromandel and this should be stopped and allow these steep areas say anything over 15 to 20 degrees to come back into Native forest.

    Tourism New Zealand should also be getting in on this as well as the Government as tourism is our largest earner of overseas dollars so is a great industry but we need to be careful re our enviroment or else if we do not look after our nature and landscape it will come back and bite us.

    I get so many negative comments already from tourists I am with so what about the thousands that travel through our country without guides to tell them about our pine forests.

  2. Tony Everitt says:
    December 19, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Thanks Doug. Concerning to hear of logging too steep with a risk of erosion. Sounds like tourism and forestry need a closer dialogue.

Leave a Reply