by frog
This morning’s Herald Sideswipe has a cute commentary on the often overlooked culprits in climate destruction – governments.
Brazil’s Environment Ministry wanted to find out who were the biggest illegal loggers in their country, but unfortunately it found out the worst offender was the government itself. In fact, the six largest deforested areas of the Amazon belong to the National Institute for Colonisation and Agrarian Reform, which distributes land to the poor.
While I doubt that we have a significant illegal logging industry in New Zealand, we certainly have a significant illegal timber industry in NZ that the government turns a blind eye to, supporting illegal deforestation elsewhere in the world.
So who is it that causes the greatest deforestation in Godzone? I’m sure one of my readers will provide some hard numbers, but I suspect that the LandCorp’s own deforestation-to dairy programme will rank right up there at the top of the list.
A large portion of forestry companies are replanting for the next harvest, particularly now that the pre Emissions trading Scheme chainsaw massacre has abaited. The massacre was predictable, predicted and accounted for in the ETS forecasts, as was the sudden drop in chopping after January this year, so let’s not blame the forestry industry outright.
I suspect that for several environmental indicators, our government itself will be near the top of the list for destroying things like water quality, biodiverse habitat and deforestation. The irony is that in this country, not only are these things legal, they are encouraged by the government.
We certainly do need a change in government. And the change we need is Green.
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Tue, October 21st, 2008
Tags: Brazil, deforestation, emissions, environment, forest, habitat, trading
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Great, lets worry about logging in a far off country and the removal of a few pine trees in NZ while our economy goes down the toilet.
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‘The world’s lungs’ mean anything to you? It’s just news.
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*treehugger*
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“Great, lets worry about logging in a far off country and the removal of a few pine trees in NZ while our economy goes down the toilet.”
The proper response is to be concerned about both of these things.
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Well if you guys hadn’t stopped and award winning sustainable Beech scheme we wouldn’t need foreign hardwood.
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Shunda,
What particular sustainable Beech scheme are you referring too?
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There’s almost no point in asking such questions of Shunda. He likes to lob all sorts of comments over the fence, but isn’t keen to discuss further once he’s called on them.
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