“The Forestry Owners Association motives in calling for the inclusion of livestock emissions in to the ETS are driven by profit and not environmental concerns,” Robin Grieve Chairman of Pastural Farming Climate Research Inc said today.
“The Forestry industry is struggling to compete with other industries for land use and wants the Government to knee cap its opposition to give forestry an advantage.
“The Foresters claim it is a fairness issue but they are anything but fair themselves
“Fairness does not penalize farmers for emissions of methane that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Dr Jan Wright and Motu, in two reports released last year, found that when in constant flow are not responsible for an unstable climate and increasing temperatures.
“Placing emissions of methane in to the ETS would be a travesty, fairness demands they are kept out.
“Fairness requires people to be held accountable fairly for the impact they are having on the environment. Most emissions of methane are not increasing the concentration of greenhouse gas while at the same time foresters have been peddling dodgy carbon credits for years that do not correspond to any real reduction of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Simon Upton, the incoming Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in a speech delivered in Nelson in September 2016 stated that by not taking in to account the albedo effect, the benefits of forestry’s carbon sequestration is overstated by 20%. Agreserach in a study completed in 2009 found that planting exotic forestry resulted in soil carbon losses of as much as 40%. These soil carbon losses are accounted for in the NZ Inventory of greenhouse gases but are not accounted for when allocating carbon credits to foresters.
“Before the Forestry Owners Association complains too hard that farmers are not paying their fair share they should look at what they are not paying.
“If foresters want fairness between activities let’s make the true impact on the atmosphere the judge, which will see them paying for their soil carbon losses and their albedo impact and farmers not blamed for methane emissions which do not alter the composition of the atmosphere.