The forestry industry wants their plantations and ‘long lived timber products’ included in an emissions trading scheme but there are significant problems with this. We agree with the EU that global deforestation is better addressed through other instruments. For example, using part of the proceeds from the auctioning pollution permits to support a stop to land clearing and reafforestation of native habitats, both nationally and internationally.

New tree plantings are risky
While deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, on a global net basis forests are estimated to sequester substantially more carbon than is released. However, forests are projected become a source of emissions in future decades as the extent of warming and changes in precipitation overwhelm the effects of CO2 fertilisation on plant growth and on ecosystem functioning. Problems are already being seen in the boreal forests where pine beetle outbreaks are spreading and causing very large releases of carbon from some regions.

The risks associated with including forestry in Australia’s ETS are significant. Offsetting industrial emissions on forestry projects such as plantations may seem like a cheap way out, but carbon sinks cannot be relied upon to permanently store the offset carbon. Also forestry offsets violate one of the key principles underpinning the IPCC defined reporting requirements for greenhouse gas releases, that emissions and removals should be reported and accounted for at the same time in which they occur. A forest takes many years to grow and absorb the carbon emitted by the industrial source that it is supposed to offset.

The EU ETS, for example, does not cover forest activities. This decision has been taken for a number of reasons.

Firstly, the EU believes that forestry projects cannot physically deliver permanent emissions reductions and that there are too many uncertainties surrounding the permanence of carbon storage and potential emissions 'leakage' problems. Storing carbon in vegetation is not permanent. Vegetation can decay, decline, die, burn, be attacked by pests and be cut down. A European Union research team estimated that, during the 2003 heat wave in Europe, around 500 million tonnes of carbon were released into the atmosphere in less than two months. These releases are equivalent to around twice the emissions from burning fossil-fuels in the region over the same period.

Their contribution is hard to monitor
Secondly, the inclusion of forestry in the ETS would require a quality of monitoring and reporting comparable to the monitoring and reporting of emissions from sectors currently covered by the system. This is not available at present for forestry and is likely to be expensive, substantially reducing the attractiveness of including such forestry projects.

The issue becomes even more problematic when you consider ‘long lived timber products’ like sawn timber and furniture. In order for them to be included you will have to be able to determine how long they last before being disposed. This is impossible for individual products; and use of an ‘average’ would be very inaccurate.

There are local impacts
Thirdly, the use of 'sink' credits creates an incentive for developers to give preference to low-cost, fast growing plantations that have a high sequestration potential. Such plantations often have a negative impact on biodiversity, especially if they displace existing ecosystems; and local catchment and landscape values. Overall, getting a credit for a carbon sink justifies a carbon emission that would otherwise not have occurred.

It would be much more preferable that we plant new native forests and habitats, as a temporary carbon sink, to help reduce the carbon emissions from the past which have given us the current high levels; rather than support new emissions because people and businesses believe they can offset them by tree planting.