CLEAN & GREEN?

GREEN SCORE	NEW ZEALAND FORESTRY
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In New Zealand we farm pine trees, like wheat or corn. Do people complain about seeing harvested wheat and corn fields? No. Because New Zealand is a pioneer in plantation forestry, our practices are foreign to many overseas visitors. Their countries still harvest large areas of natural forests for wood fibre (eg North America). Or where natural forests have long been plundered (eg metropolitan Asia), import wood from developing countries who are only now in full plunder mode.

New Zealand is a sustainable world leader in that almost all of our wood fibre needs are supplied from plantations established for that purpose, ie, tree farms.

There are differing attitudes between Kiwis and overseas visitors towards pine trees. Many Kiwis consider them almost to be weeds, due to their fast growth and large numbers now in our country. Also, there is a feeling amoungst many Kiwis that they are not “real” New Zealand trees due to their introduced status. In an irony, perhaps this makes it easier for Kiwis to understand the tree farming concept and not be horrified by seeing harvesting operations. They know from experience these will soon be followed by replanting operations, and shortly after another healthy fledging crop. Just like wheat and corn fields.

Visitors from the northern hemisphere however are familiar seeing native pine trees in their own home environment. They do not share the view of them held by many Kiwis as being weeds. Seeing them cut is as painful for them as ourselves seeing native Kauri fall (not that that, fortunately, is a likely sight these days). In this respect Kiwis and visitors can learn a little from each other. Pines are not weeds. However farmed pines can be managed like any agricultural crop for the benefit of humanity and the planet.

Some people are concerned about what they consider to be the “sterile monoculture” nature of our tree plantations. But consider this:

the nearly 6 billion global population gets 70 percent of its food from <just> nine species of plants, one species of bird, and two species of mammals. This is despite global access to about 50,000 edible plants, as well as large numbers of bird and other animal species.

says Winkie Sutton. The nature of farming is about concentrating on your best chances. If that is cool for food farming, why wouldn’t it also apply to tree farming?

Also of great weight now is the carbon-offsetting value of New Zealand’s plantation forests. Pine trees are like giant self-expanding straws that we poke vertically into the ground and they merrily suck CO2 out of the atmosphere for 30 years. They literally suck it straight into their trunks which end up towering sky-wards as space-efficient storage vessels for that nasty carbon. Even Discovery Channel would be challenged to come up with a better engineering solution for global warming.

But then there are the inevitable critics. Usually those who are jealous that they haven’t, or can’t, deploy New Zealand’s leading solutions to environmental management. Some people think this afforestation carbon offset is a bit of a cheat that is not sustainable in the long term because they note that much of our pine plantations are due for harvest around 2020. However, when we harvest them, we can replant them. New Zealand foresters have been doing this in scale for a century already. Just because we’re leading, don’t accuse us of cheating.

Some people are concerned that planting trees is not a sustainable answer to climate change because, whilst we have a lot of land, it is finite. But for this same reason, growth in dairying, our main source of green house gas emissions, can’t continue indefinitely either. As long as we balance growth in agriculture with growth in forestry, and manage our population, we should be able to hold our carbon balance. And we have about one million hectares of erosion prone land available for new tree planting (185). Of course, by concurrently making emissions reductions through improved transport and energy use, we can be an active contributor to global net reductions in green house gases.

The critical issue here though is economic. Our economy is dependent on land-based industries. Our supply of land is a finite. Therefore our long-term economic growth has to be based on higher value products.

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.

Why doesn’t our tourism industry at large explain New Zealand’s tree farming leadership to our international visitors? At the moment the tourist coaches hurry frantically through the Central North Island’s clearfelled areas hoping that the passengers might be asleep through the “nasty bits.” Campervan drivers, who mostly are not sleeping, pull over and take photos of the “carnage”.

But tour buses have microphones. Most drivers are skilled in drawling out a lot of anecdotal dribble their companies think may be of interest to visitors. So why not explain our wonderful world-leader plantation story while they are at it? Leading campervan companies have introduced GPS-guided information systems that update occupants on points of interest along the route. Why not explain the plantation story as they pass through the clearfelled areas? And regions throughout the land produce brochures on what they have to offer visitors, which are distributed via websites and information centres. Why not tell the story the way it is?

Tourism New Zealand has defined New Zealand’s target market as discerning people who have an interest in interacting with and learning about the place they are visiting. We should not be afraid to tell our excellent story to such intelligent people. They will appreciate New Zealand all the more for it, go home and tell their friends, and build our brand.

Here is a clear example of the opportunity presented by a Green Brand New Zealand strategy. At the moment our sectors are operating in silos. Tourism is doing its thing. Forestry is doing its thing. Not only is there virtually no attempt to work together, but flickers of interest in doing so have been actively discouraged. The attempt of a timber merchant to leverage the 100% Pure brand being a case in point.

A Green Brand New Zealand strategy can pull together these diverse interests and create huge synergies at very little cost. There is every opportunity to work smarter to add value for all. Conversely, if I have to sit through one more Tourism conference listening to people complaining about our “environmentally insensitive and unsightly pine logging” I think I might throw up. Now that will be unsightly.

One of Al Gore’s 7 climate change pledges is “plant trees”. New Zealand can proudly extend the famous eco-motto of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle by adding the 4^th R – “Replant”. Over the last century, New Zealanders have planted more trees per capita than in any other country on the planet. Perhaps if our European visitors understood that, instead of tut-tutting when they view our tree harvesting operations, they would be clapping.

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