by Russel Norman
Three weeks ago the National Party and Federated Farmers attacked the Department of Conservation’s advocacy for a large area of native forest on Waikatea, a Northern Hawkes Bay farm. FedFarmers called DOC a “bully”, and called for “removing tax payer funded advocacy”. National said “it is an absolute disgrace that DOC is continuing to meddle in private property rights”, and even called for DOC to pay compensation.
DOC’s statutory advocacy for the valued biodiversity and ecosystem such as this mature kanuka forest is an essential role; if the Government doesn’t advocate for biodiversity it would fall to environmental NGOs. As a welcome side-effect in this case though, DOC has saved the taxpayer a cool $2 million in deforestation penalties.
DOC’s advocacy for the mature kanuka forest saved 270ha: of the original 550ha clearance sought, only about 280ha will be permitted. Mature Kanuka forest holds ~500t CO2/ha. DOC’s advocacy therefore saved ~135kt CO2. Even at a low carbon price of $15/t, that amounts to a cool $2 million. The forest existed pre-1990, so its clearance would incur a Kyoto liability. Because the farmer would not be liable until the Emissions Trading Scheme commences 1/1/2008, the taxpayer would have picked up the tab. Little wonder there was a hurry to deforest!
Published in Environment & Resource Management by Russel Norman on Wed, October 17th, 2007
Tags: environment
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ah yes, good point.
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And at a realistic carbon price of $30/t (even the Greenhouse Gas Coalition is whining that the Govt’s $15/t is too low) that would be $4M. Good on ya DOC. Federated Farmers claim to be ‘Climate Change heroes’, yeah right!
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Russell, There has been a hurry to deforest ever since the RMA was passed. Farmers don’t want to lose the ability to develop their farms in the future and since there has been a real possibility that district plans could make removal of native fauna impossible or prohibitively expensive farmers have been clearing native fauna “just to be on the safe side”. Consequently a great deal of natives have been replaced with exotic plantations. A classic example of badly designed legislation achieving the exact opposite of what was intended.
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