End the forest wars

David Bowman, Peter Kanowski and Rod Keenan The Australian
May 07, 2008

THE bushfire smoke that blanketed the sky above Hobart late last month graphically marked an abrupt turn in the public debate about forest management.
Environmentalists were quick to make the link between forest regeneration burns and carbon emissions, and to argue that old growth should be saved to serve as carbon stores.

Indeed, this debate was anticipated in February at a conference in Hobart on management of the world’s old forests; by co-incidence that week Government adviser Ross Garnaut released his interim report on Australia’s possible response to global change.

Like it or not, carbon and the forestry debate are now firmly linked. Peppered throughout Garnaut’s report are references to how land cover change, and especially de-forestation, is connected to worsening climate change.

Garnaut advocates re-forestation and forest conservation to providing breathing space for new technologies to “de-carbonise” our economy in the next decade before we trigger dangerous climate change. He says Australia should be working with Indonesia (the globe’s fourth-largest carbon emitter in absolute terms) and with Papua New Guinea (a potential big emitter) to reduce their carbon footprint by conserving forests.

Garnaut also has made specific reference to “structural economic adjustment” to help domestic industries, including forestry, adapt.

Clearly, if we don’t practise what we preach in our forests, the charge of double standards is hard to dodge, and Garnaut’s quest for “head room” to allow new clean technologies to become operational will collapse.

This would be a brave new world for forest managers and forest conservationists, both battle-scarred following decade-long debates about biodiversity conservation, aesthetics and wood production. While hard-won agreements for greater reservation and changed forest practices have been achieved, simmering tensions remain over old-growth forests and the development of pulp mills.

Suddenly the game has changed. The catch is that rules of the new carbon game for forests are far from settled.

Factoring forests into national and international carbon trades will be devilishly complicated, as complicated as the global carbon cycle itself, the full understanding of which remains on the frontiers of ecological science. To make matters worse for Australia, the life cycles of eucalypt forests have peculiar attributes, especially the need for wildfires to initiate regeneration. This compounds the problem of neatly quantifying the carbon biomass in forests.

The fact that our giant eucalypt forests arise from occasional intense fires is often forgotten.
Similarly, the fact that climate change will increase the likelihood of more frequent and bigger bushfires profoundly challenges our management. The plain truth is that eucalypt forests are periodic emitters of carbon and excluding fire from our forested landscape is neither realistic nor ecologically justifiable. Factoring eucalypt forests into the carbon economy is not for the faint-hearted.

Quantifying the current and potential carbon stocks is a research challenge. We are not yet in a position to undertake routine carbon auditing exercises that will be a prerequisite for a carbon economy. We don’t have a good enough handle on the carbon dynamics of our forests, on the relative contribution made by regrowth and old-growth forests, or the life cycle of the carbon products derived from the harvest of native forests and plantations.

We need a coherent and comprehensive national monitoring framework which properly values carbon in wood products, and establishes a sensible baseline for forests and the forestry sector. The omission of the agriculture and forestry sectors from reporting frameworks shows how important this work is, and reinforces Garnaut’s emphasis on research and development to enable adaptation to climate change.

Universities have a unique opportunity to create the knowledge required to help resolve many of these vexed issues surrounding carbon and forest management. Hard evidence from independent researchers will be crucial in resolving many of the claims and counter-claims about the relative carbon costs and benefits of different forest management practices.

Because forest science is at the centre of the emerging carbon economy, degree courses for “landscape carbon accounting” are not out of the question.

Viewing forests through a climate-change and carbon lens changes all the old orthodoxies about forest conservation and management. With foresight, imagination and serious investment in research and training, the carbon economy presents a remarkable opportunity to create new forest-based industries and jobs.

We need to end the “forest wars” and focus on future challenges. Garnaut may be the trigger for this renaissance in forest management.

David Bowman, Peter Kanowski and Rod Keenan are professors of forest science at the University of Tasmania, Australian National University and University of Melbourne, respectively.
Copyright 2008 News Limited.

Meanwhile, The Greens …

SMOKE LIFTS MOMENTERIALLY AT THE FOREST PRACTICES AUTHORITY
But Forest Destruction Code Review Not The Answer
Tim Morris MP
Native Forest Logging Shadow Spokesperson
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
www.tas.greens.org.au
The Tasmanian Greens today criticised the Forest Practices Authority (FPA) for seeking to codify the appalling and unnecessary practice of burning forest residues rather than banning them outright as would be the responsible thing to do, on public health, environmental and climate change grounds, saying that any moves to do will in fact legitimise the annual forestry burns season.

Greens Shadow Native Forest logging spokesperson Tim Morris MP said that Tasmanians have just been through the worst pollution event of the year where the forest industry has poisoned the air for weeks on end and it is bitterly disappointing that the Forest Practices Authority’s response is just to seek to codify, and further entrench, the practice instead of applying pressure to the industry to end this unnecessary and irresponsible activity.

“It is abundantly clear that the forest industry does not operate by the reasonable rules that every other industry and individual has to abide by; no other industry would be allowed to spew millions of tonnes of noxious chemical pollutants into the sky is a period of a few weeks when the weather can be relied upon to disperse the pollutant over every city and settlement across the island,” Mr Morris said.

“The community has been expressing its outrage over these annual pollution events for years, yet finally when the FPA realises that it can’t get away with not doing anything, it still buckles in the industry’s favour.”

“Any move to ‘codify’ this outdated polluting practice will in effect only serve to legitimise them, which is not going to help one iota the many Tasmanians outraged over the annual burns regime.”

“The state has made it illegal for individuals on domestic blocks to have a smoke plume longer than 5 meters, and has banned back yard burning because of the environmental and health risks that are known the arise, but completely ignores the massive pollution and climate changing chemical release by the noxious forest industry.”

“The response of the supposedly independent Forest Practices Industry to the appalling scenes of the past few weeks is to move to codify and entrench the burning of forest residues instead of doing the right thing and banning this polluting practice.”

“Even the Forest Practices Code as it stands states ‘Care should be taken to ensure that emissions of smoke, dust or noise from forest operations do not cause serious or material environmental harm under the Environmental Management and Pollution Control Act 1994’, yet we know that the burns are resulting in hospital help being sought, and the release of millions of tones of pollutants into the atmosphere, yet it is all apparently fine with the Lennon Labor Government, with no action taken under the Code or our Environment Management and Pollution Control Act.”

“Tasmanians deserve better, they deserve clean air and they deserve knowing that one industry does not have carte blanche when it comes to polluting our atmosphere with impunity,” Mr Morris said.

And …

FORESTRY BURNS SMOKE RESULTS IN HOSPITALISATION
Despite Moving Home To Find Clean Air
Kim Booth MP
Greens Shadow Private Forestry spokesperson
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
www.tas.greens.org.au
The Tasmanian Greens today described as an “unacceptable infringement on public health” the impacts caused by forestry burn-off smoke which has resulted a Northern Tasmanian man having to be hospitalised, despite already having moved home once in an attempt to find a smoke pollution-free area in which to rebuild his life.

Greens Shadow Private Forestry spokesperson and Member for Bass, Kim Booth MP, said that the situation facing Mr Clive Stott, as reported in today’s print press, is a horrific example of how entrenched the Lennon government has allowed the situation to have become, for forestry interests to be prioritised over the community’s interests to the extent that people can be driven from their homes and hospitalised, and no action is taken.

“It is an unacceptable infringement on public health standards for anyone to need to seek hospitalisation due to the out-dated and polluting practice of forestry burn-offs,” Mr Booth said.

“The reported experience of Mr Stott is a shocking indictment on the forestry industry, especially the private forests industry who appear to have been responsible for the recent burn offs in Northern Tasmania, as well as an indictment upon the Lennon government who has turned a blind eye to community complaints for far too long.”

“It is outrageous that Mr Stott first had to move from his home in the north east due to unacceptable health impacts suffered thanks to the industry’s belligerent adherence to its burns policy there, let alone the fact that his perceived smoke-free haven in Grindelwald was also turned into an asthma nightmare for him and required him to seek hospital help via the Emergency Department.”

“When is this government going to say ‘enough is enough’, no industry has the right to put any member of the public’s health at risk, and especially not on an annual basis and this polluting practice must stop?”

“Where is the Health Minister, Lara Giddings, and the Environment Minister, Michelle O’Byrne, standing up to the forest industry and threatening them with legal action over the air pollution and public health danger that the industry’s actions have caused?”

“No other industry would get away with its actions resulting in people’s hospitalisation without some kind of action being undertaken – but under Lennon Labor the industry doesn’t even feel it needs to respond to concerns raised.”

“This government must change course dramatically and govern in the public’s interests, not just that of forestry and big private forestry companies,” Mr Booth concluded.