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The Government will devolve the authority to make decisions about where pine forests can be planted to local councils.
This was an election promise made during Labour’s 2020 election campaign in response to increased planting of carbon forests on farmland, which has been disrupting rural communities.
Pine forests have been found to be one of the cheapest ways to offset carbon emissions, which has led to investors purchasing productive farms and converting them into forests.
These investors sell carbon credits from the sequestration into the emissions trading scheme, allowing companies responsible for emissions buy these offsets rather than emit less carbon.
This concerns the Climate Change Commission which thinks carbon offsets may be less effective at preventing climate change in the long term, compared with gross reductions.
For example, Canada’s pine forests are becoming a net source of carbon emissions due to forest fires and insect outbreaks. One independent report found disturbances to forests had recently released over 200 mega tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
Rural communities’ opposition to carbon farming is less about climate resilience and more about a loss of economic activity that could trigger an exodus and undermine regions.
In May this year, Ruapehu mayor Weston Kirton called for immediate government action to address the threat to his community posed by carbon farming.
“They are seeing the loss of significant areas of productive land with flow-on impacts including the loss of skills, employment, economic activity and community identity, along with negative environmental outcomes.”
He said three large stations had been sold to corporate forestry firms in recent months, adding to a total of 10,000 hectares of “good hill country” that was being planted in pine.
Rural councils wanted the central government to devolve the power to manage the risks at a local council level, and restrictions for fire safety and to stop owners abandoning forests.
Today, the Labour government has granted some of what Kirton requested by giving councils’ the authority to determine where, and how much, carbon forestry can occur.
Kieran McAnulty, Minister for Rural Communities, said the Government had heard and acted on concerns of regions such as Tairāwhiti, Wairoa and the Tararua District.
“Everyone accepts we need to plant trees. The concern is that blanket planting of productive land is counterproductive. This change will assist communities to ensure that the right type and scale of forests are planted in the right place,” he said in a statement.
Peeni Henare, the Minister of Forestry, said the tighter rules were about getting “the right tree in the right place”.
Local councils will be empowered to decide which land can be used for plantation and carbon forests through the resource consent process.
Changes to forestry standards will impose the same regulation on permanent pine forests that plantation, or logging, forests have currently.
“This means many standards such as ensuring firebreaks, rules planting next to rivers, lakes and wetlands will now be required for any new forestry conversions,” Henare said.
In addition to this, the Ministry for the Environment is currently reviewing the emissions trading scheme to assess whether businesses need a stronger incentive to decarbonise and not just rely on offsets.
25 Comments
Why pine? It's glorified cardboard as a timber.
You cannot 'offset' carbon that has been underground for longer than all of human evolution, being added to the above-ground arena. Worse, much of the country in question WAS in forest, pre human impact (I include Maori in that; they arrived 5 minutes before Europeans in this context). The imperative - the owing - is to replace that, before offsetting additional carbon. That's like starting a savings account, while stopping payments on your mortgage - false accounting.
Wow.. they just worked this out.
Amazing..
The fact that those carpet bombing rural nz for carbon farming didnt have to adhere to the same rules as forestry (i.e fire breaks etc ) defies belief.
The sacrifices we make on the altar of climate change have no bounds it seems..
How do carbon farms pose NO fire risk?
www.odt.co.nz/rural-life/rural-life-other/ets-forestry-rule-change-prop…
In the South Island, dairy farmers got away with whole scale transformation of the rural landscape and economy with the resulting environmental destruction and loss of social structures due to the transient nature of dairy farm ownership - each farm is just a stepping stone the next bigger and more destructive one.
Why can't forestry do this? - or is there a hint of xenophobia in all this outcry from some rural people. (overseas ownership is all ways mentioned)
Now if the argument was about the environmental downside of mono cultures and their industrial visual appearance then these Groundswell types would have my support.
I think it's been linked to before, but a worthwhile read;
Let Them Eat Carbon | Biteback Publishing
Can we not see the forest through the trees (pun intended);
One could argue that the coalition Government’s billion trees programme combined with a strengthened NZ ETS (carbon market), is a form of payment for ecosystem services.
But, if it is, it’s the wrong one for New Zealand to my mind. Pinus radiata is a cake-and-eat-it-too approach with respect to climate change. The “offsets” planted today, will have likely been harvested by 2050, and they degrade, rather than enhance, our natural ecosystems.
I would rather government subsidies were spent on the regeneration of permanent, native forest cover that actually enhances our biodiversity, through providing habitat and food for our endemic wildlife, alongside the planting of specialty tree crops.
If we pursued climate pragmatism and the associated no regrets pollution reduction measures, regenerative agricultural practices would be particularly relevant in transforming both our environment and our economy.
As rural land owners convert hill country pasture back to permanent native forest, reverse engineer drained land to wetlands, and convert fertilised pasture to organic, it seems sensible to me that government should assist farming through this needed transformation by way of payment for these restored ecosystem services.
Firstly the economic change from dairy in the south island has been hugely positive.
Secondly most of the dairying in the south is based around family (some family company) ownership.
In fact there is not a " transient nature of dairy farm ownership - each farm is just a stepping stone the next bigger and more destructive one."
Many of these family ownerships have run for years.
You seem to think that the benefits of the number of Ford Rangers and jet boats in the area out weighs the environmental destruction.
It would be very interesting to know what percentage of dairy farms in the South Island are in the same ownership as of 25 years ago. Where I live I can only think of one out of thirty or so.
When we bought our Sth Is farm the majority of neighbours were non dairy - they were the ones with the boats etc. 20+years later when we sold, we had no non dairy farmer neighbours - they had all converted to dairy - and remained on their farms. The reason they gave for converting - to enable succession. Your comment re Ford Rangers and jet boats sounds one of envy. There's a place for intergenerational farms (which effectively lock any non-family, young farmers, out of ever being able to own that land) as well as farms that change ownership, which enables young farmers to get on the farm ownership ladder.
When I go back to visit the Waikato area I grew up in, dairy farms are now rare - kiwifruit orchards, lifestyle blocks are everywhere to be seen, and even a solar farm (not yet completed) Nothing stays the same. You can become bitter about change or you can accept that change is inevitable. A family member is still on the land that has been in my family over 100years - but the land stopped being a viable dairy farm before the end of my fathers tenure. It's now an oversized lifestyle block.
For example, Canada’s pine forests are becoming a net source of carbon emissions due to forest fires and insect outbreaks. One independent report found disturbances to forests had recently released over 200 mega tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
and our native forest will do the same as these native forests - yes they are native folks - and ours do burn as well - ask yourselves why are they burning so bad in the first place?? - any guesses!!
Oh well -
1. it will put the spotlight on people actually having to reduce emissions - good thing
2. Crash hill country land values - bad luck farmers
If we don't reduce emissions - what do we do?? Buy heaps of offsets overseas or ???
Good to see hill country farmers are lining up to regenerate 30,000 ha plus per annum into new native forests - around 50 to 70 farms a year closed up for the next 30 years.
What do you mean they don't want to!!! what do we do then?? (even when that fails as the trees don't grow or are super super slow.)
Might retire and hit the beach me thinks.
As the world becomes more vegetarian as we must to feed nine billion people and eliminate methane emissions from ruminants, this frees up some 3/4 of our rural land presently grazing livestock. We need to put this back into trees like it used to be. Some but not all of these should and could be production forestry to provide materials for the wholesale change in construction to wood from concrete and steel (again necessary for slashing embodied carbon emissions in buildings), but also tree crops like avocados and nuts and native bush around all our valleys and water courses. This turning our country essentially mainly back into forest cover that it once was is what needs to happen. Its a significant change to rural communities, but it needs to happen.
P.S. someone above suggested pine is rubbish timber - well a lot of it in an unprocessed form can be pretty average, however it is great for making plywood, LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber - basically like long continuous but very thick plywood where the veneers are laid up with the grain all in one direction instead of criss-cross plywood. This makes fantastic beams and columns for commercial buildings and even in houses for longer span beams), glulam beams and posts (glue-laminated solid wood stacked up and end jointed so short lengths can be used - again for commercial building beams and columns but also posts lintels and beams in domestic construction). And there are now two ways of getting good durability and better stability with pine used externally, without using chemicals - thermal modification eg Adobo and basically pickling it in vinegar eg Accoya.
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