Gary Taylor: this whole notion of large scale permanent exotic forests is something that we need to nip in the bud

Another week goes by and another farm in this country sells to permanent forestry and taking advantage of the current ETS settings. In just a matter of weeks more than 7,000 ha alone have been sold to international companies for the sole purpose of farming carbon. One is the parent company of Ikea and a Swiss company is another. You have to ask yourself the question, are the current ETS settings and in particular the unlimited offsetting opportunities is in the best interest of New Zealand’s future?

This week Gary Taylor from the Environmental Defence Society joins me to give his views on this all-important challenge we face. The Environmental Defence Society or EDS, was founded 51 years ago, with an aim of bringing together the disciplines of law and science.

The Government is about to release a review of the national environmental standards for plantation forestry, so I asked Taylor what can we expect from it’s release. “I'm expecting there to be a shift towards more requirements for resource consents, for forests rather than having permitted activity status, you know, everywhere. And I'm also expecting in conjunction with the with the National Policy Statement on freshwater management a tightening of controls around erosion and sediment and in slash, my position is that I think that forests or the forest sector as a whole has had a bit of a free ride up until now in terms of its environmental performance.”

Taylor also pointed out that the expansion of permanent exotic carbon forests poses a threat to to small rural communities because they're essentially plant and walk away forests, “So I think that this whole notion of large scale permanent exotic forests is something that we need to nip in the bud.”

I asked Taylor whether the Government's decision to not ban permanent exotic forests from the ETS at this point in time is a good one, “No I don't, actually it's a non-decision because what they've decided is to not make a decision at the stage and defer it. The problem is the first of January 2023, that's coming around and unless there is a change the default position will be that permanent exotics will be enabled through the ETS I don't think that's good, both for broader environmental reasons, but also too much carbon sequestration really mitigates against real emission reductions. And the purpose of the ETS is to drive permanent real gross emission reductions across the economy to decarbonize the economy, the purpose of the ETS is not to support a carbon forestry industry.

“I think the other problem too is that with too much carbon farming, the price is going to go down and the incentives to make real reductions are going to diminish as well.”

It’s important to remember that Taylor leads an organisation driving for better environmental outcomes, The Environmental Defence Society is a non-profit organisation dedicated to achieving better environmental outcomes, they are not a farmer or industry lead group. They see the problems with carbon farming clearly, carbon farming and afforestation does not actually drive or incentivise real change, carbon farms are an exotic monoculture that decimate small rural communities and deprive them of jobs, and impact this counties ability to produce food and impacts the all-important export dollar.

Another interesting point Taylor made was how large areas of hill country are being stripped of stabilising vegetation for several years between forestry cycles, this is exacerbating run-off volumes and flooding, as well as vastly increasing sediment loads, entering the coastal marine area. Sediment from forestry as it turns out smothers and kills marine life. Forestry plays an important role in farming systems without question, but trees have their place and clearly the forestry industry has some way to go to improve it’s environmental footprint.

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Angus Kebbell is the Producer at Tailwind Media. You can contact him here.