Native forest logging is a broken business model. The industry has become financially unviable and now forest protection offers Western Australia millions of dollars every year through the sale of carbon credits.
Published by The Australia Institute, Carbon Credits from Western Australia’s Multiple Use Public Native Forests, details the significant earnings that could be generated by protecting WA’s south-west forests as carbon stores.
Report author and Acting Director of the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy, Associate Professor Andrew Macintosh said, “Forest protection could generate significant wealth for West Australians.
“Depending on the carbon price, the WA Government could earn between $16 million and $438 million per annum between 2013 and 2032 through the sale of carbon credits if it were to stop logging the native forests in the south-west.
“In addition to these financial benefits, the cessation of logging would generate a number of ‘co-benefits,’ including improved heritage, biodiversity and hydrological outcomes,” he said.
These significant potential earnings are in stark contrast with the current loss-making logging industry.
The State Government’s logging agency, the Forest Products Commission (FPC), manages the logging of WA’s state-owned native forests, plantations and sandalwood. The FPC was formed in 2000 and its reported cumulative profit across all its operations to date is a meagre $15 million.
This $15 million reported profit relies heavily on the use of accounting mechanisms in which the FPC’s ‘biological assets,’ our forests, are re-valued on paper. Each year, the FPC re-values the native forests in its books and incorporates that theoretical revaluation into its profit and loss statements. These revaluations, amounting to $121 million, have had an overwhelming and distorting impact on FPC’s claimed financial performance.
The impact of this is profound. Without the theoretical revaluations the FPC has incorporated into its accounts, the agency has operated since formation at a $106 million loss.
Since the formation of the FPC in 2000, rainfall has declined by almost 10%. Drought, forest diseases, major fires and insect attacks have had significant detrimental impacts on forest health and on the quality of timber.
It is abundantly clear that WA’s native forests have not increased in value by $121 million since 2000. The FPC has been logging our forests at a significant loss and taxpayers are footing the bill.
WA needs a new forest economy; one in which our forests are protected as biodiverse carbon stores and the money earned by selling the carbon credits is used to protect our forest legacy and benefit all Western Australians. This change would also eliminate unfair competition to the plantation industry, which would have further beneficial repercussions for the State.
It’s time for change.
What’s happening in WA’s forests?
The south-west of Western Australia is an internationally recognised biodiversity hotspot, which means that the area is very rich in species diversity, and that more than 70% of the natural vegetation has been destroyed.
The south-west corner of WA is a lush, green, fertile oasis surrounded by hot, dry landscapes. The karri and jarrah forests that thrive in this area grow nowhere else in the world. A number of significant threats to forest health are combining, with severe consequences.
Rainfall has declined by around 20% since the mid 1970s and is projected to continue declining. Karri and jarrah forests require 900mm and 600mm of rain per annum respectively to grow. Scientists are predicting that these forests will exist only in isolated patches in coming decades and large portions of the forests are already showing signs of drought stress.
Logging, prescribed burning and wildfires, the spread of forest diseases, mining and increased vulnerability to insect attacks are all impacting on forest health and on wildlife.
Every year around 100 square kilometres of native forest are destroyed by logging in the south-west. More than 85% of the wood generated is sold as woodchips, firewood, charcoal and railway sleepers.
Logging is exempt from State and Federal wildlife laws and threatened species including Red-tailed, Baudin’s and Carnaby’s Cockatoos, Numbats and Western Ringtail Possums are facing extinction with their last refuges being destroyed. Over the past decade 18 forest dependent species have moved to a higher level of threat of extinction.
Globally, we are coming to terms with the fact that the ways we have been using our forests is not sustainable and is now also no longer financially viable. It is an industry that requires restructure, whatever your core motivations are – economic, environmental or social.
We have always understood that our forests are the lungs of the earth, and that they have a role in rain patterns, we now also understand that they are vital to a safe climate. They draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it in the trees, and in the soil.
Now that we can profit from forest protection, by selling the carbon credits, this isn’t a conflict between economic and environmental values; it’s simply the way forward.
Go Jess and end this selfish logging industry
In a carbon emissions sensitive planet does it make sense to destroy our precious forests?
Forests are thr lungs of the earth, now that resonates with me.
A cessation of native forest logging in WA is long overdue for all the reasons Jess has outlined and of course to protect habitat for all the creatures that live in the forest. Sadly an increasing number of birds and animals are becoming endangered due to habitat loss.
Not all of us have our priorities right. The forests should matter, shouldn’t they?
Of course the forests left standing is worth more than the timber taken out – this has been obvious forty years ago. Logging is only done if it is profitable for the industry involved, who control those exercising political power.
Leave our native forests alone.
I pity the Builders and Carpenters : they’ll soon be out of good jobs: they can at least blame extra Carbon Dioxide produced by their crafts. Like wow-wows catching their own tails…
I see the banner an this website claims multi-award winning investigative journalism. That is surprising since the article overlooks that carbon credits are not available for existing forests, only forests which are newly established. There is a proposal under the REDD scheme to grant carbon credits for existing forests, but only in developing countries. The article also fails to mention the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change both recognise that sustainable forest management, through maintaining carbon stocks in forests and the storage of carbon in forest products “will generate the largest sustained mitigation benefit”. Therefore there would be no gain in carbon credits fromt he cessation of native forest harvesting and it is disingenuous to claim there would be. The use of wood products is far superious in environmental terms than the use of any other building material. Would you have us substitute wood for brick, aluminium, steel?
There is also no impact on biodiversity throught native forest harvesting as demonstrated in a scientific peer reviewed publication recently so to claims forest practices are threatening iconic species is also disingenuous and typical of the scare mongering practices of underhanded envrionmentalists. The 18 species which moved to a higher level of threat during the period of the forest management plan were clearly stated to be a result of past agricultural clearing and predation by exotic species NOT as a result of native forest harvesting, but it appears the authors has chosen to selectively report facts rather than give an honest account of the impact of native forest harvesting and let the reader use their powers of critical thinking to make up their own mind.
Melissa, the Australian Government’s Carbon Farming initiative (CFI) does provide a framework for carbon credits to be generated from ‘avoided deforestation’ (or cessation of logging in existing forests). As Jess’ story reports, a recent study by the Australian National University confirms that the value of this income steam for Western Australia could be very significant (and certainly a lot more than the marginal or loss-making logging industry). There has also been quite a bit in the press recently about carbon credits that could be generated through the cessation of logging in large areas of Tasmania as part of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement.
While logging industry lobbyists might have succeeded in getting some logging-friendly words into the text of various UNFCCC documents, it does not change the fact that carbon sequestration in timber products is NOT recognised as a ‘permanent’ carbon sink under the Kyoto rules for carbon accounting. This is because the vast majority of timber from logging operations is either waste, or burned on site, or used to make very short lived products like paper. For the very small fraction that does go into furniture and building products, the lifecycle of these products is much less than the 100 years required for ‘permanence’ under Kyoto rules. The result is that any forest logging operation is treated as a net source of carbon pollution, and any avoided logging is treated as a net emissions offset.
As for your other arguments :
1) there is more than enough capacity to supply the building industry from plantation sources without substituting for other materials as you claim
2) It is absurd to think you can clearfell native forest with no impact on the endangered species that live there. If logging were really having no impact on endangered species, then there would be no need for the logging industry to to be exempt from the laws that protect these creatures, laws which apply to all other sectors and industries.
If so, then why aren’t the huge amounts of forest in national park generating these enormous carbon credits? Around 60% of Western Australias forests are in National Parks and could be used for carbon credits if your claims are correct. When I see this happen I’ll treat your claims with less skepticism. As for your other claims. If there is clearly enough capacity to supply the building industry from plantaiton sources why is Australia a net importer of forest products? As is the case with many people who oppose the forest industry you have a very limited understanding of forestry. At least 90% of the hardwood plantations in Australia are grown for pulpwood, not building materials. You cannot equate plantation area with timber supply. The selection of different speices and different managment regimes is required. As for it being absurd that you can clearfell native forests without impacting on the endangered species that live there, this has been demonstrated in a number of peer reviewed scientific papers. Again most harvesting in native forests is not clearfelling and to imply that it is shows a lack of understanding of forest practices
All of these arguments make me think and ponder even more… -I was impressed by a friend who returned from Central Asia with beautiful large sheets of yearly calendars. The sheets were a little rough, but with clear print, both in Tamil’s writing and correct English easily legible. Firstly I thought “what kind of a tree is that – pretty large- ” and thought further ” if such trees are chopped down, more excess Carbon Dioxide can definitely come about…” . Then my friend explained: this is a special type of paper. It’s made out of elephants manure. My brainwork started to travel. If such paper is fabricated thus, it should nourish grass, other plants and even help other trees grow higher, to produce more natural CO 2 . And then I trod one step higher: such paper comes from manure which comes through the elephants constantly devouring leaves. And how can CO 2 nourish trees without leaves? That nearly stumped me. But there was one other explanation: what can be worth/worse (win/win) for us are ‘green gasses’ . Methane is produced by elephants, cows and whatever. I have finally arrived at the peak of thinking. One more solution remains: go to chain stores for food. We buy plastic containers for all our daily food. As long as you don’t mix plastic with plasticine. Much turns out with logical conclusions. Why fight or fright or flight? Or keep arguing?