Forest owners say industry under threat | Wairarapa News | Local News in Wairarapa

Wairarapa forest owners are being short-changed by the Government's Kyoto policies, says Denis Hocking of the NZ Farm Forestry Association.

Mr Hocking, a forester from Bulls, is the association's spokesman on climate change. Along with Bill Bayfield, from the Climate Change Office and Peter Berg, from the Forest Owners Association, he spoke at a seminar attended by more than 30 Wairarapa forest owners at the Solway Park Hotel last week.

Mr Hocking said that instead of reaping the rewards from helping New Zealand meet its Kyoto commitments, local foresters are finding that their forest sink credits (the carbon credits they earn from planting trees) are being used to bail out their competitors.

Wood products compete with aluminium, plastic and steel, but the Government is re-allocating the credits earned by foresters to companies operating in those industries.

"The worry we've got is they're our competition and they're getting our credits," Mr Hocking said. "Effectively they will be subsidised by forestry."

The Government has assumed responsibility for all the credits and liabilities generated by New Zealand forest owners under Kyoto.

But local foresters, already feeling the pinch of low prices for radiata logs, feel bitter that the Government has not shown any support or gratitude to them for generating credits.

Meanwhile, deforestation is progressing at a rapid rate as foresters turn over their land to pasture for dairy cows and sheep.

The Wairarapa Farm Forestry Association says 10,000ha of planted forest across the country has been converted to pasture in the period between 2002 and 2004 alone.

New planting is at its lowest level for 50 years and New Zealand is suffering a net loss of plantation forest area for the first time ever.

Wairarapa Federated Farmers president Jim Weston says the general feeling of "uncertainty" is discouraging foresters from re-planting once they've harvested their trees.

Although forestry is New Zealand's third biggest export earner, the Government appears to be doing little to avert a crisis. Industry insiders say this is especially worrying given the country is reliant on its forests to generate those all-important sink credits.

"Ten years ago, at the peak of the planting boom, nurseries in the south of the North Island were producing more than 15 million radiata seedlings," Mr Hocking said. "Now it's about two million."

When New Zealand ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2002, the Government expected to earn up to $1.4 billion selling carbon sink credits generated by its commercial forests to other countries who failed to meet their targets.

But growing emissions by the country's transport sector and its coal-fired power stations (many Kyoto signatories use nuclear power stations to generate energy) mean that New Zealand's carbon dioxide emissions in 2003 were already 37 per cent above the 1990 level.

Now the current estimate is New Zealand will have to spend $300 million buying credits from other countries to meet its own obligations.