by Russel Norman
So much for blue-green. The Nats are opposed to DoC having an advocacy role. Yet DoC’s advocacy saves important bits of native bush. Below is an exchange from parliament yesterday in which National attacked DoC for protecting old growth kanuka and Chris Carter rightly defended DoC (and picked up on my blog from Wednesday about DoC not only saving kanuka but also saving the taxpayer the cost of carbon credits that would be needed to cover the deforestation).
12. Hon DAVID CARTER (National) to the Minister of Conservation: Did he support his department’s Environment Court case against the Bayly Trust; if so, why?
Hon CHRIS CARTER (Minister of Conservation) : Yes; because Waikatea is a regionally significant mature kanuka forest and an important bird and reptile habitat.
Hon David Carter: Can the Minister confirm that the highly respected Bayly Trust volunteered to conserve 800 hectares of native bush, wanting to clear only 260 hectares of scrub, and why did that proposal not receive the Department of Conservation’s wholehearted support?
Hon CHRIS CARTER: What I can confirm is that the Bayly Trust said it would do that, but it was not prepared to put it into a covenant. Taking the trust to the Environment Court meant that it was required to do so. It was a very positive environmental outcome.
Russell Fairbrother: Why did the Department of Conservation appeal to the Environment Court the decision of the Wairoa District Council to consent to the Bayly Trust clearing the native kanuka forest?
Hon CHRIS CARTER: The Department of Conservation has had a longstanding and well-known interest in the mature kanuka forest on the Waikatea block. The Department of Conservation met with the current landowners in 2004, prior to the purchase, to identify the conservation values on the block. It willingly entered mediation prior to the Environment Court hearing, seeking to protect areas of particular significance. The landowner walked away from those discussions. My department is satisfied with the outcome ordered by the Environment Court. Approximately 280 hectares of mature forest will be conserved, with a covenant pest control and fencing to protect a further 800 hectares of restored indigenous vegetation. It is a pity that this outcome was not able to be secured without recourse to the Environment Court.
Jeanette Fitzsimons: How much has the department’s advocacy for the biodiversity values of the Waikatea kanuka forest saved taxpayers in terms of the carbon costs of deforestation?
Hon CHRIS CARTER: Through the Department of Conservation’s advocacy, 280 hectares of mature kanuka forest will be conserved. As the forest existed prior to 1990, its clearance would have incurred a Kyoto Protocol liability that the taxpayer would have had to pay until the emissions trading scheme commenced. As the Greens co-leader Russel Norman has pointed out, that liability is estimated at approximately $2 million—a cost the taxpayer will now not be expected to shoulder, thanks to the Department of Conservation taking an active role in this matter.
Hon David Carter: Can the Minister confirm that in excess of $100,000 of taxpayer money was wasted by the Department of Conservation on this case, which was inevitably going to be thrown out by the Environment Court?
Hon CHRIS CARTER: What I can confirm is that if the Department of Conservation had not appealed the case, the covenants the Bayly Trust said it would put in place—but did not—would not have been put in place. This land is now protected, thanks to the excellent work the Department of Conservation has done. The National Party may want to gut the Department of Conservation, but Labour, like most New Zealanders, supports the excellent work the department does.
etc
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Russel Norman on Fri, October 19th, 2007
Tags: environment
More posts by Russel Norman | more about Russel Norman
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Couple of queries on carbon credit values as a tradeable asset as covered by the questions in the house.
“As the Greens co-leader Russel Norman has pointed out, that liability is estimated at approximately $2 million—a cost the taxpayer will now not be expected to shoulder, thanks to the Department of Conservation taking an active role in this matter.”
If the bush had been chopped down (or burnt in a bush fire) who would the $2M in carbon debits then required, have been purchased from?
Who would have to pay the government or the land owner (cant be the landowner – if laible he would have to own the credits in the first place?
As the bush is now saved, where does the $2M sit as an asset in the government accounts?
Are all the carbon credit forming assets (all bush, trees, grasslands, etc. sitting in the government books as assets?
How big is this asset?
As the carbon credit production asset can be destroyed (by natural means such as fire, flood, volcanic activitry, possums, etc.) does the government make provisions in the accounts if the assets were destroyed and a liabilty arose to purchase carbon credits?
Has there been an actual physical saving (in the form of an auditable transaction) of $2M?
Or is this smoke and mirror time with theoritical savings?
The reality of carbon trading I think is starting to hit home, while good on paper the implementation is going to be highly questionable.
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I’ve never heard of a Kanuka “forest” before. Usually its just a bunch of scrub 5-6 feet high. How did they arrive at the measurement of it?
I think anyone could save 2 million, simply by not taxing in the first place…
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Roman, you are confusing kanuka with manuka. Generally, mature kanuka is about 20 metres high (I’m open to correction) and is the ideal canopy for the regeneration of climax forest (rimu, totara, kauri etc). Generally the big old kanuka die off as the slower-growing stuff comes through. Big branches drop off and make excellent firewood.
Though I’m only talking from anecdotal experience, this may vary according to soil, climate etc.
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You’re complicating things excessively I think Gerrit… (anyway, accounting always makes my head spin… it’s all smoke and mirrors to me. I have spent sleepless nights trying to get trivial amounts of money to balance)
“If the bush had been chopped down (or burnt in a bush fire) who would the $2M in carbon debits then required, have been purchased from?”
Presumably from someone who planted some forest, or who reduced the CO2 production of their industrial process, for example.
The $2M liability would be real enough, the government would have had to fork out the cash.
Carbon trading, as it is set up through big international negotiations, is inevitably “imperfect”, just like the WTO : the big, powerful partners get to write the rules to suit themselves. However, unlike the WTO, it’s not a zero-sum game, more like the first premise of an international taxation system, where the “tax” levied is an ecological benefit for the whole planet. On that basis, I think it’s worth supporting, because the lack of any economic mechanism for internalising the costs of what we’re pumping into the atmosphere, is driving the planet to destruction.
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alistair, Your anecdotal evidence may be incorrect for regeneration of rimu. DoC’s study “Structure and canopy tree species regeneration requirements in indigenous forests, Westland, New Zealand – DOC SCIENCE INTERNAL SERIES 66″ includes this paragraph on the effect of shading on regeneration.
It also identified a crucial trigger for conifer regeneration in Westland:
Of course if Waikatea’s climate is significantly different from Westland’s then shading may not be as important in determining which trees regenerate beneath the kanuka canopy.
http://www.doc.govt.nz/upload/documents/science-and-technical/dsis66.pdf
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Not complicated at all Alistair, be mindful that a fool (as in one not looking at the details of a transaction) and his/her money are easily parted.
Now that we are getting into the detail of carbon trading you start to see potholes.
“Presumably from someone who planted some forest….”
You would need a audit trial from the someone’s who planted some forest that the carbon credit was genuine and sold only once.
“…..or who reduced the CO2 production of their industrial process, for example.”
Who would own the carbon credit if say NZSteel shut down Glenbrook. The government or NZSteel shareholders?
“…..where the “tax? levied is an ecological benefit for the whole planet.”
There will not be an ecological benefit as already the carbon credits supply is larger than the carbon emmisions.
Reason being that the Al Gores of this world have created carbon credits from dubious and unaudited sources.
Carbon trading is a scam.
The only way to stop excessive carbon emmisions is to tackle the emmiters on an individual basis. Using the “tax” to clean up procceses and promote the alternatives.
Making sure the “tax” does not pass through middlemen to cream of their 30-80%.
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Who would own the carbon credit if say NZSteel shut down Glenbrook.
That’s easy. The shareholders. It’s just like tradeable fishing quotas. If the profitability of the mill were marginal, it might become better value for shareholders to shut it down and cash in the carbon quota.
already the carbon credits supply is larger than the carbon emmisions.
If this were the case, then carbon credits would be worth nothing. Yet they are traded, for money. This indicates that, despite the scams, they constitute an economic incentive to carbon reduction.
You’re right, auditing is required, and some of the criteria are dubious. But what else have you got? The system gives each nation’s government an incentive to reduce CO2 emissions, for the country’s overall economic benefit. They may choose to do that by additional legal constraints or taxes. That ought to create a general movement towards improvement. Pure gratuitous virtue would be nice, but as Dick Cheney has said, “conservation is a private virtue”, i.e. you shouldn’t count on it for public policy purposes.
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This raises a point that I’ve badly wanted aired in public. Do we get any credit under the Kyoto Protocol for the fact that we have so much unspoiled native bush and forest reserve, all of which of course helps to absorb CO2? One problem with Kyoto is that it only takes into account CHANGES SINCE 1990, both in forestation and emissions.
No calculations seem to have been made regarding N.Z. actually absorbing far more carbon than it emits, thanks to total forest and bush cover and low population. I understand that one of the reasons that the U.S. has to disagree with Kyoto, is that even the U.S. absorbs more than it emits overall, thanks to some of the world’s biggest forest reserves. The worst offenders in the overall are the nations of “old Europe” which are highly populated, highly developed, and who cleared THEIR forest cover centuries ago.
I believe there is a strong moral case to be made that Kyoto is inherently unfair to a low-populated, less-developed, less wealthy nation such as N.Z.
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An equilibrium forest is roughly carbon neutral. Carbon is only absorbed in forest growth, hence a climax forest – a forest and its soil at its natural maximum biomass – can only absorb carbon equivalent to that which it releases from damage, browsing, decomposition. Hence, while a National Park is a major carbon sink (i.e it has heaps of carbon trapped in it that would be released into the atmosphere if it were deforested), it has been that way for a long time so it doesn’t absorb net carbon. Whereas pest control, regeneration, reforestation all do because the increase the biomass of forest.
Kyoto is designed to reduce emissions, i.e. the cause of change in carbon levels in atmosphere, so apart from being penalised if we deforested a national park, we cannot claim as income the carbon capital we are lucky enough to have sequested in our protected forest. Kyoto takes our emissions and sinks as at a point in time (1990) and measures change in emissions and sinks since that point. We claim credit for reduced emissions or increased sinks, and incur debits for the opposite. Handing out credits for that forest to the NZ Govt would be unfair to others and a return for luck in the same way that handing out all credits to forestry companies for pre-1990 forest would reward them for forest that were not planted with sequestration in mind. I.e. it is rewarding luck, and it would make deforestation free.
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In other words, it’s better (for global warming) to cut down old trees and plant new ones.
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No. How did you reach that conclusion? Climax native forest will always be a larger carbon sink than plantation, simply due to its larger biomass. Cutting old and planting new will release more net CO2 than leaving it alone. In this sense, leaving native to slowly regenerate back to climax is in the long run better for the climate than faster growing exotics.
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PhilBest, That is the correct conclusion, provided the carbon in the old trees remains fixed and is not released into the atmosphere. It makes a huge difference whether the carbon stored in old trees remains stored in furniture, is released in woodburners, or is converted into methane by forest floor bacteria.
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I agree with both of you. I agree that “climax native forest will always be a larger carbon sink than plantation”. The barrow I would like to see pushed harder is that it is unfair to N.Z. that the Kyoto Protocol gives no credit to us for having so much “climax native forest”. Populous nations of a similar size to us can meet their Kyoto requirements while remaining net overall emitters while little NZ is penalised in spite of being a substantial net absorber.
Kevyn is right too, regarding plantation.
Actually one of the worst things for Carbon release into the atmosphere is forest fires. It is insane for “tree-worshipping” policies to prevent the clearing of fire-breaks and undergrowth that would restrict the damage when a fire starts.
Regarding the size of biomass, how many people are aware that the extra CO2 in the atmosphere has caused approximately 7% increase in vegetative growth?
This gets really interesting. Who really, really understands the earth’s climate? Making hugely costly international policy decisions on the basis of computer models that haven’t got anything right so far, doesn’t seem wise to me – but Saint Al seems to have the adoring masses right in his pocket.
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Phil : It’s not New Zealanders who are net absorbers of CO2… it’s the land they happen to inhabit. Are you saying that you, as an inhabitant of NZ, have some sort of moral right to emit (for the sake of argument) ten times more CO2 equivalent than, say, an inhabitant of the Netherlands? That sounds pretty weird to me. And it’s completely beside the point of Kyoto, which is a pragmatic attempt to REDUCE the excessive emissions. From a moral standpoint, those who should be reducing are those who have the ability to do so.
According to your moral compass, it’s fine for Americans to continue driving huge SUVs, because they “own” enough trees to absorb the CO2, but Indians and Chinese had better stop farting? It just doesn’t make any sense, either philosophically or pragmatically.
About forest fires : do you have any evidence of “tree worshippers” preventing the creation of fire breaks? It’s an interesting allegation.
I would say that most people who are informed about global warming are aware of the boost in vegetative growth that has occurred with increased CO2 levels. It’s one of many feedbacks, positive and negative, that complicate issues of climate change. If you think the IPCC doesn’t take it into account, think again.
We’ve been discussing climate change on this site for several years now… I believe you’re new, welcome to the debate. You’ll find we’re generally pretty patient with beginners.
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What I’m saying is: we’re only about half as well off as the people in several European nations, and a major reason for this is that we have a low population and we have not exploited our resources to become as wealthy as those nations when we could well be doing so. They cut most of THEIR forest down over the last 300 years in the process of becoming true “first world” countries.
N.Z. on the other hand, if we admit the honest truth, falls somewhere between nations like France that can afford the technology to meet Kyoto requirements, and nations like China that get special dispensation to enable them to catch up. Kiwis do NOT live high on the hog driving gasguzzling SUV’s and so on. The relatively large size of Kiwis “Carbon footprint” is a measure of our relative lack of wealth and our inability to afford the technology that Europeans can; rather than profligacy.
So yes, I do say that Chinese, Indians and so on have a moral right to develop their economies and catch up to the West (and I abhor “Green” tyranny that would deny them this right) and I also believe that Kiwis have a moral right not to be saddled with the same sort of environmental compliance costs as rich Frenchmen, Germans, Swiss, and so on. And I suspect that the vast majority of Kiwis would agree with me, especially once their energy costs REALLY start to hike.
This is leaving aside the question of whether all the distinguished climate scientists who are saying the problem has been overstated might be proven right in a few years. I know they are in a “minority”, but minorities have a habit of being proven right in science. But what would it actually take, “climate change” interests being now so entrenched and powerful? How many years of temperature decrease or reductions in the incidence of unusual weather events? In fact, would we even be told if this was the case? Does this not bother anyone on the “left”?
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Phil Best said: They cut most of THEIR forest down over the last 300 years in the process of becoming true “first world? countries.
Yes, and we cut a lot of ours down on Aotearoa / New Zealand too – because we didn’t know any better. The science didn’t exist in those days, so we (both Pakeha and Maori) did what we thought best to advance ourselves economically. We had no idea of the long term environmental and economic consequences – nor did the Europeans who did the same a couple of hundred years before we did.
Climate change isn’t the only consequence – just take some time to go round East Cape from Gisborne to Opotiki, and you’ll see land that is now absolutely useless for anything because of erosion because we were stupid enough to cut down the forest.
And I’m not bothered by the minority of climate scientists who dispute anthropogenic global warming. All their hypotheses depend on some other reason like cosmic rays / solar flares to explain atmospheric warming.
But no scientist whose report I have read is prepared to refute what has been demonstrated in the laboratory – that the infra-red emissions resultant on the dipole moment of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide & CFC’s increasingly warms the surrounding air with increased concentrations of those gases.
Show me the evidence that the results of all the experiments that have been done on this are flawed, Phil, and I’ll start to take your suggestion that we should give more credibility to the pronouncements of the climate change denier scientists.
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Phil : You’d find, if you bothered to look, that the forest area of western Europe is quite large, bigger than it was 200 years ago, and ever-growing. NZ colonists destroyed most of the forests during the last century and a half, and are very far from replacing it today. Besides which, NZ benefited from the era of cheap fossil fuels, which is now coming to an end
There is no green tyranny to deny the Chinese or Indians anything. Insofar as these two sovereign nations sign up to GHG reductions (and they are doing so), they are doing it both out of self-interest and global responsibility. They are conscious that, unlike NZ, they are big enough to make a major difference, and that they will be in large part responsible for the consequences if they do nothing. They are no doubt inspired by the responsible example of Japan (especially) and Europe (to a lesser extent), and increasingly indignant at the irresponsibility of the USA and their hangers-on.
The fact is, despite its high population density, Europe is well on the way to becoming carbon-neutral, which is no easy feat. It’s an absolute disgrace that NZ, with its high level of development (higher than that of about half the nations of Europe) and low population density, is nowhere near doing so, and making, objectively, no progress towards it.
Kiwis do NOT live high on the hog driving gasguzzling SUV’s and so on.
Yes they do. NZ is fourth-worst in the OECD in terms of energy consumed per unit of economic output.
This is leaving aside the question of whether all the distinguished climate scientists who are saying the problem has been overstated might be proven right in a few years.
There are none left, Phil. All you’ll find is a few old cranks that are too stuck in the mud to recognise that they’ve been wrong throughout their long and distinguished careers. The science is overwhelming. On the other hand, if, in say ten years time, the polar icecap has re-formed etc, then I’d be happy to admit I’ve been wrong for 15 years (25 by then)… but someone will have to come up with an explanation as to what enormous and currently unknown chilling force will have counteracted the ever-rising levels of greenhouse gases we’ll have by 2027. Perhaps a providential massive outbreak of vulcanism, or an unexpected asteroid strike, will save the day (and plunge us into a new ice age)?
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Eh? There are none left? “A few old cranks….” COME ON. This is totalitarian debate shut-down stuff.
Hypotheses about solar flares…… Yeah, just hundreds of references in Scientific texts prior to the global warming scare, regarding cycles of warming and cooling, regular, and predictable, and still happening. Not that anthropogenic global warming isn’t real, it’s just that it makes no sense to deny all the other established science in an endeavour to say that Mankind is solely responsible for everything that happens with the weather and climate. This is Tower of Babel stuff.
What really worries me is not the science or the scientific observations that might be made, it’s the politics, and the possibility that we’ll never even find out if the phenomena are not proceeding according to the climate change bureacracy’s master plan, and that brave “whistleblowers” will get given the works just as bad or worse than nasty big business interests might have been guilty of. I have less of a problem in this regard with the IPCC than I have with Mr Al Gore, who would fill the role of “Napoleon” in a modern Climate-change version of “Animal Farm” quite nicely.
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Alistair
So if in fifteen years you are proved wrong you would say sorry, as nice as that sentiment is I think it might just be a little to late.
If the greens had their way we would be a third world nation by then……but perhaps thats the aim.
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More…. I have never disagreed that NZ has a high ecological footprint per head of population, e.g. fourth worst in the OECD. What I insist, and this is something that too many green activists can’t get their heads around, is that that is because we are poor, not because we are profligate.
I know that people in my trade in Europe earn fully twice as much as I do far the same work, and this is fairly typical. (But if we were to compare a range of vocations, probably the one in which NZ-ers do stand to earn disproportionately high amounts would be in bureaucracy, and possibly consultants and lawyers too.) I object to being saddled with the same cost of living increases as people twice as well off as me, and furthermore, whose governments are not Luddites when it comes to nuclear power. This is the elephant in the room when it comes to NZ politicians and activists speaking highly of the carbon neutrality about to be achieved by France, Sweden, or whatever.
Europeans can all afford the latest low emission cars and low energy appliances. I can’t. Most Kiwis can’t. That’s why they’re cleaner living than us. We DO NOT live high on the hog. We’re just paupers by their standards.
What we need is economic growth and wealth creation. Green tyranny is keeping us all poorer, although this is not as immoral as what it is doing to Africans, Bangladeshis and the like. Take the Resource Management Act. All this has done is drive up the costs and lengthened the delays for every essential project, thus restricting our economic growth, and probably affecting the environment negatively in the overall because of this. The incomes of bureaucrats and consultants that have been boosted (and are the only ones to benefit) are of no net use to the nations prosperity.
As I said above, I don’t have too much difficulty with the IPCC on global warming provided it is taken in tandem with the superb work of Bjorn Lomborg concerning the relative cost benefit structures of the alternative courses of action that offer themselves. Movements that bloodymindedly want to shut down economic activity rather than improve our ability to cope by way of expensive technology, are anti-human and totalitarian, and are busily shutting down both rational debate and the flow of factual information.
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