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Wentworth Group

Dr Mark Diesendorf

Australian Government

News Commentary

 

Dr Mark Diesendorf

Dr Mark Diesendorf teaches, researches and consults in the interdisciplinary fields of sustainable energy, sustainable urban transport, theory of sustainability, ecological economics, and practical processes by which government, business and other organisations can achieve ecologically sustainable and socially just development.

Australian Government

The Garnaut Climate Change Review Draft Report Possible Design for a national greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme: Final framework report on scheme design. A report prepared by the National Emissions Trading Taskforce.Australian Government Green Paper on Carbon Trading

 News commentary

Crikey.com

Minister Penny Wong's Green Paper on Climate Change: What's in it?

Essays on Climate Change Issues

Index of Essays on this site

Title	Author	Source	Content
Killing Earth's largest organism	Julian Cribb	www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20081001-16778.html	Leading Australian marine scientist Dr J.E.N. “Charlie” Veron argues we are at the brink of a sixth mass extinction – and that the killers of the largest living organism on the planet, the Great Barrier Reef, will be none other than ourselves.
Seeing wood, trees & forests	Mark Poynter	www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20072112-16756.html	Elements of the environmental movement are using the call for curbing the deforestation in tropical countries as an opportunity to further their campaigns against Australia’s native hardwood industry despite the reality that it uses a renewable resource obtained mostly from sustainably managed public forests.
Global Warming: What effect it might have upon bushfires	John Cribbs	www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20072510-16496,html	As officialdom in Victoria, supported by the green NGO movement, prepares to excuse their lack of action in bushfire preparedness, damage mitigation and fire hazard reduction , the threat of Global Warming rears its head in relationship to the frequency and effect that it will have upon bushfires
The pulp mill: the forgotten issue is wood supply	Chris Beadle	www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20070609-16310.html	Can Tasmania's production forests produce enough wood to supply a world-scale pulp mill for the next few decades?
The Concept of delayed gratification	Stephan Lewandowsky		The more we learn to regulate our desires as children, the more competent we are as adults. This concept is applied by the author,to the management of Climate Change.
A Matter of Survival	Emma Brindall	http://www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20081701-16798-2.html	Emma Brrindall reports on the Bali Climate Change Conference. Dr Angus Friday, Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), gave an impassioned speech in which he said that for people from small islands around the world, “the outcome of Bali is a matter of survival”.

 

     

www.sciencealert.com.au/features/20081001-16778.html   

Killing Earth’s largest organism – Thursday, 10 Jan. 2008, by Julian Cribb

Five times in the history of life on Earth, the corals have died out.  Each time they have taken tens of millions of years to evolve anew from simpler creatures. Leading Australian marine scientist Dr J.E.N. “Charlie” Veron argues we are at the brink of a sixth mass extinction – and that the killers of the largest living organism on the planet, the Great Barrier Reef, will be none other than ourselves.

In “A Reef in Time”, published by Harvard University Press, Dr Veron traces the story of the GBR from beginning to what he sees as its probable demise towards the end of the present century.

Charlie Veron is no Hanrahan, crying “We’ll all be rooned”. As former Chief Scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science and author of one of the world’s best known reference books on coral species, his is a voice that speaks with calm authority about a subject he has known intimately as a diver and professionally as a scientist for all his working life.

But it is a voice with a tinge of despair, doubting that even humans with our well-honed instincts for self-preservation, can draw back from the planetary chaos we have already unleashed: “It cannot rationally be doubted that we are now at the start of an event that has the potential to become the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.  This time there are no bolides (asteroids), no supervolcanoes, and no significant sea level changes...it is a case of humans changing the environment.”

As diver and researcher Charlie sees the Reef as Nature’s pinnacle of achievement in the ocean realm, a place of endless beauty that has endured when other places on Earth have changed beyond recognition.  It is the only living organism large enough to be viewed from outer space. What a tragedy if it were reduced to a crumbling, weed-infested heap of limestone rubble within the lifespan of our children, never to return while humans still exist.

The processes that may bring this about are already at work beneath the ocean’s impassive countenance. Invisible eddies of heated water bring sudden death to vast tracts of corals when they linger over them for a few days.  And, molecule by molecule, the carbon dioxide we produce each time we start out cars, turn on our lights or produce our goods dissolves into the upper oceans, turning them ever so slightly acid – and acidity is death both to corals and the calcareous algae that ‘glue’ the reef together.

Attempting to reconstruct what many scientists now fear will be the likely fate of the GBR and, indeed, all the earth’s corals (along with the 500 million people they support), Veron reaches back in time to understand the processes that obliterated corals in the ancient past.

At points 434 million, 350 million, 251 million, 205 million and 65 million years before the present, some cataclysm either totally or partially obliterated all the corals on earth, along with a great many other species. For ten million years or more following each event the fossil record is devoid of corals – and of the vast limestone formations, even entire mountain ranges, which they produced. After events like the “Great Dying” at the end of the Permian era (251my ago), it appears corals, along with 96 per cent of all marine life, were totally obliterated and had to begin evolving again from scratch.

The causes of these mass extinctions are unclear, though asteroids, supervolcanoes, tectonic and climate change figure large among the theories. One of the unifying factors may have been the mobilisation of vast amounts of the Earth’s stored carbon into the atmosphere, and thence into the oceans, turning them acid and shutting down the life which depends on alkaline water to form its shells and skeletons. It is possible that the initial great die-off was followed by vast blooms of bacteria, feasting on the carcases, and this in turn stripped all the oxygen from the water (as it does today in highly polluted waters), killing fish and other creatures which had survived the initial acidity.

“The prospect of ocean acidification is frightening,” Veron states. “It is serious because of commitment – a word that will soon be used with increasing frequency in the scientific literature.” Commitment, essentially, means that a process is unstoppable. If the oceans turn acid – as they are already doing - the only known process to reverse this is the slow weathering and dissolution of limestone mountain ranges into the sea over millions and millions of years. The public, aware of the role of CO2 in climate change, is far less conscious of its function in acidifying the oceans and of the vast spans of time required for recovery, suggested by the gaps in the fossil coral record.

Unlike coral bleaching, which is visible within days, acidification is a creeping death. “The long-term outlook is that reefs will be committed to a path of destruction long before any effects are visible,” he says. If global atmospheric CO2 levels reach 650-700 parts per million, as they are forecast to do by the latter part of this century, traces of human-produced CO2 will still be present in 30,000 years time, contributing to acidification. This indicates the immense lags in the system even were we to cease burning fossil fuels forthwith.

“Ultimately, and here we are looking at centuries rather than millennia, the ocean’s pH will drop to a point where a host of other chemical changes, including a lack of oxygen, may kick in.  We have set the stage for the sixth great mass extinction, and another few decades like our last century will see the Earth committed to a trajectory from which there will be no escape. A continued business-as-usual scenario of CO2 production will ultimately result in destruction of marine life on a colossal scale.”

The need for action to quell CO2 is urgent but Veron – along with other scientists – is frustrated that the media, in its quest for “balance” by including both scientific and non-scientific claims in stories, helps to keep the public and governments in a perpetual state of indecision. “Such public uncertainty, in combination with pressure from groups with vested interests, has prolonged government inaction in democratic countries (notably the USA and Australia) and this delay is already having far-reaching consequences.  The GBR will be among the first in a long line of dominoes to fall....”

“A Reef in Time” is an alarming, but not alarmist, book. Passionate yet objective, Veron presents the science behind his argument lucidly: much of this will be new to lay audiences unacquainted with the more recent thinking about climate science.  He acknowledges doubt and uncertainty where they exist. Like many, he sees an urgent global effort to eliminate CO2 emissions as fast as possible, using all the scientific and technological firepower at our disposal, as the only possible option.

In the end, however, A Reef in Time is a threnody to the passing of one of the Earth’s most wondrous organisms.

Julian Cribb is an adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology Sydney and editor of www.sciencealert.com.au. 

ALSO

 

www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20072112-16756.html

Seeing wood, trees and forests

Friday, 21 December 2007 – By Mark Poynter

Now the Bali climate change summit has closed there is a welcome realisation that curbing deforestation in tropical countries is perhaps one of the more achievable actions that could substantially and quickly reduce global carbon emissions. However, unfortunately and rather incredibly, this is being viewed by elements of the environmental movement as an opportunity to further their campaigns against Australia’s native hardwood industry despite the reality that it uses a renewable resource obtained mostly from sustainably managed public forests.

Greens climate change spokeswoman, Senator Christine Milne, set the ball rolling when she greeted news of Australia’s signing of the Kyoto Protocol by stating that “Mr Rudd’s first challenge will be to tackle our forestry emissions by stopping logging in Tasmania and Victoria”.

She followed this up on her Bali Blog, on December12, by articulating her concern that representatives from Australia’s timber industry were in Bali attempting to water down definitions of deforestation and degradation “which would destroy their propaganda that the management of Australia’s forests is carbon positive”.

If true, the need for such action reflects poorly on the state of knowledge about sustainable forestry among the international community particularly given the very obvious differences between it and deforestation. Arguably, it also highlights the effectiveness of the environmental movement in deliberating blurring the distinction between Australian forestry and tropical deforestation.

For the record, deforestation in developing countries such as Indonesia involves logging and/or clearing with the aim of permanently removing forest cover in favour of some other agricultural land use. While it can produce wood, it is mostly conducted illegally and so represents an unregulated and unsustainable supply. The release of carbon from clearing and subsequent burning of vegetation coupled with the loss of future carbon sequestration capability led the 2006 Stern Review to conclude that tropical deforestation was responsible for 18 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions.

In stark contrast to this, sustainable wood production as practiced in Australia’s native forests is best described as managed harvesting and regeneration with the aim of maintaining forest cover and wood supply in perpetuity. On all available public land it is a legal, highly regulated aspect of forestry, which the Collins Australian Dictionary defines as “the science or skill of growing and maintaining trees in a forest”.

With respect to combating climate change, sustainable wood production makes a positive contribution to reducing carbon emissions by:

• transferring carbon from forests into storage in the community in an array of wood products while creating space in the forest for replacement trees to sequester more carbon, thereby providing a net increase in stored carbon;
• producing the only renewable building material which not only stores carbon, but is produced with embodied carbon emissions which are hundreds of times less than the alternative materials steel and aluminium, and six to eight times less than concrete;
• maintaining designated portions of forest at a younger average age which grows more vigorously with enhanced rates of carbon sequestration compared to older forests which grow progressively slower and so sequester less carbon; and
• reducing demand for illegally obtained rainforest timbers which is a contributing factor to tropical deforestation.

In Australia, the environmental movement’s denial of the carbon positive benefits of sustainable wood production is mostly centred around an entrenched presumption that all mature forests - if not logged - will eventually grow into “old growth” that can store massive amounts of carbon forever. A significant additional factor is a poor understanding of what sustainable wood production is, largely stemming from an unwillingness to consider forestry in its proper context as a landscape scale activity.

The notion that all forests can be “preserved” in parks and reserves that securely store carbon forever is nonsense given that Australian forests rely on disturbance for their long term renewal. Our forests will always wax and wane as carbon stores, particularly subject to the influence of severe fire. For example, it was estimated that 130 million tonnes of greenhouse gases were emitted during the 2003 bushfires in southeast Australia. Regardless of whether forests are “preserved” or used for wood production, they can never be protected carbon sinks.

Further to this, the popular view of “old growth” forests as massive carbon stores is somewhat compromised given that senescent trees are no longer growing and eventually become net carbon emitters as they decay and slowly die. Many people fail to appreciate that “old growth” forests will inevitably release their carbon stores by dying or being burnt.

Arguably, the focus of environmental activism on tree felling at a coupe scale is a deliberate tactic to avoid scrutiny of landscape context and proportionality that could weaken campaign messages designed to create a false impression that logging has no limits. This focus has also enhanced their argument that wood production causes substantial carbon emissions because post-logging regrowth on any particular logged area will obviously take as long as a century to regain its pre-harvest carbon store.

However, when sustainable forestry is appropriately viewed as a cycle of harvest and regeneration at a landscape scale, a very different picture emerges. By design, sustainable harvesting - as is the aim in those Australian forests where it is permitted - means that the annually harvested volume obtained from a pre-determined portion of the designated available forest has been calculated to match the annual growth of the available forest as a whole. Accordingly, even as carbon is being removed from one part of the forest in wood products and waste, it is being simultaneously recaptured in the rest of the forest both in areas previously harvested and regenerated, or in areas yet to be harvested.

If the sustainable harvest volume has been correctly set, there should be no net loss of carbon from designated wood production zones.

Although wood production is now limited to within just a net 6 per cent portion of Australia’s public native forests, it generates economic activity in rural areas that provide the stimulus to maintain access infrastructure and local workforces at levels capable of actively managing fire which, along with climate change, is the greatest threat to the ecological integrity of our forests.

In view of its limited extent and its benefits, the manufactured hysteria that continues to surround sustainable Australian wood production is reflective of the environmental movement’s uncompromising advocacy of an overly-simplistic and ill-considered ideology that locking out human activity is necessary to safeguard ecological integrity.

The folly of this has been demonstrated around Australia in recent years where plummeting levels of active fire management due to a lack of resources have been acknowledged as a critical factor in the intensity of wildfires that have had a severe impact on biodiversity.

Unfortunately, Australian environmental activists are also likely to advocate this “lock-it-up-and-leave-it” approach as the solution to tropical deforestation when the best outcome is far more likely to be a mixture of forest reservation and the rationalisation of local timber production to a highly regulated, sustainable footing. This would conserve forests in perpetuity while providing a secure socio-economic base for those poor communities formerly reliant on illegal forest exploitation.

Although for many Australians it may be both counter-intuitive and politically incorrect to believe that cutting down trees could ever have a greater good, when undertaken within the context of sustainable wood production it makes a sensible and significant contribution to combating climate change.

Unfortunately, the saga of the Tasmanian pulpmill seems to have entrenched public discourse on forestry issues in an emotional, highly-charged brawl.

All too often this sees those who really know about the issues being berated or dismissed by uncompromising opponents lacking credible arguments and unwilling to allow their pre-conceived views to be challenged. This is a disturbing social phenomena which is likely to consign the sensible management of forests to ongoing irrational conflict both here and overseas.

Ultimately, if the community cannot accept that sustainably producing essential materials from a naturally renewable resource is part of the answer to climate change, there is probably little hope for the planet.

Mark Poynter is a forestry consultant, and Victorian media spokesperson for The Institute of Foresters of Australia and member of the Australian Environment Foundation.

 

www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20072510-16496,html

Global warming. What effect might it have upon bushfires?

 

Thursday, 25 October 2007 – By John Cribbs

As officialdom in Victoria, supported by the green NGO movement, prepares to excuse their lack of action in bushfire preparedness, damage mitigation and fire hazard reduction , the threat of Global Warming rears its head in relationship to the frequency and effect that it will have upon bushfires.

There are probably no more than two ways in which this effect might happen.

First, there might be an increase in the number of days when the conditions for fire are at their zenith, that is, where there is a strong northerly wind with very low humidity.

Next, there may be an increase in the frequency of dry lightning storms. It is possible to have more than a hundred lightning strikes in a single thunderstorm that actually ignites the forest floor.

Therefore, it must be concluded that, in a hot spell - spring, summer or autumn - if the conditions occur over which homo sapiens have no control, it could reasonably be expected that there would be an increase in the number of bushfires.

But the "number of fires" is not the critical question. Of far more importance is fire size and intensity. These factors are not greatly influenced by temperature. Rather the crucial factor is fuel and how much of it is available to burn.

Over much of the bushland in Victoria there has been no effort to reduce fuel levels by any means for the past twenty-five years as a result of pressure from urban green groups, academics and gutless leadership from the government. We can therefore expect more of the same. Large uncontrollable fires with erosion and hydrophobic forest floors. Forests destroyed, mudslides and damaging floods. Maybe firefighters killed.

At least initially, over the two and a half million hectares that have been so brutally incinerated in the past five years, the damage will not be of a similar dimension because the regrowth has not had the opportunity to die off and litter the forest floor.

The conundrum for our Victorian community is, do we reinstate the fuel reduction measures that worked so successfully from 1944 to 1983 or do we try a new approach? Instead of the fuel reduction burning that causes so much distress to those with bronchial troubles or to those pop-ecologists who do not understand the role of fire in Australian eucalypt forests, would it be possible to use mechanical means of keeping the forest floor clear of the detritus that so easily ignites?

Some experts refer to  the European model of forest management where mechanical methods and collection of fuel by peasants keep the forest floor clear of leaf litter, and the resulting material is transformed into bio fuel. Would such a method work in our dense, remote eucalypt forests? On our steep slopes? And what other damage would be done by machines in the fuel collection? In my opinion the European model is completely inappropriate for Australia.

As well as fuel we must consider the need for thinning if the climate is going to get warmer and drier. Given the neglect of twenty-five years where trees, now at least twenty-five years old, are growing within a few centimetres of each other, many of them will have to be removed so those that are left have a chance to grow. Many areas of East Gippsland Shire show the result of a lack of forest management. Along the Princes Highway between Lakes Entrance and Genoa there are millions of trees growing too close together. There is a pressing need here for a machine to enter the forest, thin out the dense regrowth trees and recycle the resulting timber to enable a better forest to grow.
Alfred Howitt, a leading Victorian explorer, in his 1890 address to The Royal Society of Victoria entitled "The Eucalypts of Victoria. Influence of settlement on the eucalypt forests" wrote about the open grassy plains that were the status quo in Gippsland until settlement.

Of the Snowy River he wrote: "The Valley of the Snowy River, when the early settlers came down from Maneroo [Monaro] to occupy it  …. Was very open and free from forests.  … clothed with grass, and with but a few large scattered trees of E. hemiphloia.  … The immediate valley was a series of grassy alluvial flats …"

He continued:  "Within the past twenty five years many parts of the Tambo Valley … have likewise become overgrown by a young forest …. Similar observations may be made in the Omeo district".

Howitt makes reference to unforseen consequences of removing fire from Gippsland when he observed that while young seedlings now had a chance of life, "a severe check was removed from insect pests". He describes how insect pests have destroyed many River Red Gum forests in central Gippsland.

Bringing the issue into this century, Mr Vic Jurskis of Forests NSW, observed in "The decline of eucalypt forests as a consequence of unnatural fire regimes" that his research suggests that the lack of fire in NSW forests has contributed to the decline in that State’s eucalypt forest. Further, he accepts that, where fuel reduction burning has been removed, it is better to have cattle grazing.

There can be little doubt that, unless Victorian forests are subjected to effective programs of fuel reduction burning and thinning, Global Warming will have a negative effect. However, in every cloud, there may be a silver lining.

Currently cool temperature fuel reduction burning efforts in Victoria have been negligible, but what activity there has been is mainly in autumn.

If Global Warming occurs it will make all of our seasons warmer, providing opportunities to carry out fuel reduction burning in winter as well as spring and autumn.

A further benefit to rural Victoria would be a greater number of people employed.

John Cribbes is a retired, 68 year old public service accountant with some commercial accountancy skills. Trained at one time as a Business Analyst by Dun & Bradstreet, he also has analytical skills. He is very comfortable with extracting information from people who have qualifications that authenticate their conclusions. This has enabled him to track down and examine various documents that are relevant in the current debate. His attitude to the environment is simple. Whatever man does to alter his environment, if nature does not like it, the venture will fail. It is no good hugging trees and worshipping at that high altar when the basic principle of fire in forest management is ignored or suppressed. He believes that without human intervention and science based management it is obvious that Australian forests are in decline. 

www.sciencealert.com.au/opinions/20070609-16310.html

The pulp mill: the forgotten issue is wood supply

Thursday, 6 Sept. 2007 – by Chris Beadle

 

Having observed the pulp mill debate in the media and watched it approach its climax this week I am concerned that a very key issue is being neglected.  Can Tasmania's production forests produce enough wood to supply a world-scale pulp mill for the next few decades?

I have examined three key documents that were produced as part of the assessment process for the pulp mill: the Gunns Limited Integrated Impact Statement (IIS); an Expert Witness Statement prepared for Gunns Limited and an Independent Review of the IIS on Wood Flow Assumptions prepared for the Resource Planning and Development Commission. I also draw upon my own knowledge of the productivity of eucalypt plantations in Tasmania and their current capacity to supply pulpwood.

I have come to the conclusion that projected wood flows may not meet the requirements of the mill over its lifetime, and that supplying large amounts of wood to a pulp mill neglects consideration of existing and new opportunities to add greater value to wood.  Kraft pulp mills, once operational, require wood on a continuous basis.

Wood supply and forest types

In terms of the pulp mill's wood supply, there are two types of forests to be considered.  The first is native forest, which has a large diversity of species.  The second is planted forests, which are monocultures - that is, one species of tree is planted in rows.

Native forest can be classified based upon age.  Old forest is usually over 100 years old and often includes trees that were present before white settlement.  Regrowth forest is managed largely for eucalypt wood over rotations that average 50-100 years before they are harvested and regenerated.

Eucalypt plantations managed for pulpwood have short rotations and are harvested on average every 15 years.

Wood supply for the mill will be 90 per cent hardwood (eucalypts from plantations and mainly eucalypts from native forests). The remaining 10 per cent is softwood from pine plantations.

There is an intention to increase the proportion of wood supply to the mill harvested from plantations.  In the absence of information to the contrary, all the wood will be harvested in Tasmania.

Wood supply and plantation growth rates

Some eucalypt species have very fast early growth rates and therefore lend themselves to short-rotation plantation forestry that is ideal for pulpwood production.  In Tasmania two species are planted, Eucalyptus globulus and E. nitens.  The preferred species is E. nitens, an exotic that originates from Victoria.  Both are capable of very high growth rates when supplied with sufficient nutrients and water.  However, nutrient and water supply limit growth rates in Tasmania. Low temperatures in winter also restrict growth and average harvestable yields are probably about 15 green metric tonnes per hectare per year (GMt/ha/year).

Simple arithmetic shows that about 260,000 ha of eucalypt plantations dedicated to pulpwood production would be required to meet the total wood supply for the mill which, when operating at full capacity, is stated to require 4 million GMt of wood to annually produce 1.1 million Mt of kraft pulp.  If 10 per cent of the wood used by the mill was pine, the area required for eucalypts would be about 235,000 ha.

An average short rotation to harvest is about 15 years.  If the mill opened in 2009, the only eucalypt plantation wood available at that time would be sourced from those plantations established in Tasmania by 1994: that is, about 25,000 ha.  Hence there will be heavy reliance on native forest when the mill opens.

The rate of planting of eucalypt plantations has accelerated in the past 12 years and the estate in Tasmania is currently around 170,000 ha. However, about 45,000 ha of this area is managed in the first instance for sawn timber and veneer, and pulpwood is a by-product.  The mill's proponents recognise that plantations will only provide part of the wood supply and so base their calculations on eucalypt and pine pulpwood being harvested from a 150,000 ha plantation estate.

Two points to note.  First, the suggestion that the mill be located at Hampshire and be supplied only with plantation-grown timber would mean a much smaller mill than proposed unless plantation wood is imported from the mainland.

Second, any suggestion that the supply of wood from existing, maturing plantations in Tasmania can be increased to meet 100 per cent of the pulp mill's intake by 2017 is not correct.

Wood supply and native forests

Native forests are generally slower growing than plantations and average harvestable yields are around 3 GMt/ha/year. Average total sustainable wood yield from native forests harvested for wood production on both public and private land is probably between 3.5-4.0 million GMt/year.

Between 2000-2005 the total amount of wood harvested from these forests in Tasmania was about 5.1 million GMt/year including about 4.4 million GMt/year of pulpwood and 0.7 million GMt of sawlogs.

In short, current rates of harvesting exceed the long-term sustainable yield from this type of forest.  Several factors have probably contributed to this being the case.  One is that the areas harvested include old forest that has accumulated large amounts of standing timber. To this extent, it is a one-off resource.

When the mill opens the intention is to source 90 per cent of the wood supply from native forests (70 per cent) and plantations (20 per cent) in north-east Tasmania.  The majority of wood costs are actually in harvesting and transport.  Pulp is a world commodity product and any country is only competitive (particularly in the first world where cheap land and labour are not available) if wood cost is minimised. That is one of the reasons why the preferred site is the Tamar not Hampshire.

In 10 years, the proportion of wood supply for the mill from native forest in north-east Tasmania will have fallen from 70 per cent to 20 per cent of the total requirement, presumably because all that is left is what can be sustainably supplied from regrowth forests.  Thus by 2018, the proponents forecast that 50 per cent of the wood will be
harvested from plantations in north-east Tasmania.  The rest of the wood supply will come from other parts of the state.

A comment was made recently in the media that "the wood supply is good". In the short term this may be the case, but only due to a reliance in part on old forests and confidence that the plantation estate established in Tasmania by 2005 will be able to provide about 75 per cent of the wood supply (3 million GMt/year) by 2020. The eucalypt plantation estate in Tasmania in 2005 was about 160,000 ha.  After sawlog and veneer have been taken, the equivalent of about 130,000 ha of
this is available to supply hardwood pulpwood; thus there is a shortfall of about 1 million GMt in 2020.  Up to 0.4 million GMt of this may be pine but there is still a potential shortfall of 0.6 million GMt. In other words, plantations will be unable to supply the mill's wood requirements at the levels suggested.

I can only conclude that omitting independent scrutiny of the wood supply from the ongoing assessment of the proposal was a flawed decision.  Please note that the RPDC-sponsored report referred to above did "not consider broad references to resource area and location [in the IIS] as sufficient demonstration of the sustainability of wood supply".

Wood supply and other users

The proposed pulp mill will place demands on Tasmania's production forests that will potentially overshadow demands from the other industries that rely on the same wood supply (such as sawn timber and veneer). Several of these not only add more value to the wood harvested, their products also lead to greater storage of carbon.  Tasmania's
production forests will have a more secure and sustainable future if they are managed in the first instance for such products rather than pulp.  Current arguments against the mill are all about it being in the wrong place but it may also prove to be too large for the longer term benefit of Tasmania's forests and for a more balanced suite of forest
and associated industries. 

Dr Beadle is a professional forest scientist based in Hobart with 35 years' experience. Between 1997 and 2005 he was Manager of the Sustainable Management Programme in the Cooperative Research Centre for Sustainable Production Forestry (which ceased operations in 2005). This expression of concern represents Dr Beadle's own views and not those of his employing organisation, CSIRO.

Thursday, 17 January 2008

By Emma Brindal As an observer new to United Nations climate talks in Bali, I found the goings on in the negotiating rooms to be at odds to what climate change means for a majority of the world's population. Just occasionally the diplomatic atmosphere was broken to reveal that climate change is a justice issue that is already affecting many of the world's people. One of these rare moments was when Dr Angus Friday, Chairman of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), gave an impassioned speech in which he said that for people from small islands around the world, “the outcome of Bali is a matter of survival”. However, the voices of people calling for climate justice were louder than ever before at these negotiations. They were heard at the official UN side events; at the nine-day long civil society forum being held outside the conference centre; at the women's caucus, at demonstrations inside the conference centre; and at the international day of action in Denpasar. At the civil society forum I heard stories first hand from people already experiencing the impacts of climate change and their climate change “solutions” to climate change, such as the expansion of the biofuel industry. Indonesian representatives from the People's Alliance of the Archipelago talked about the dispossession of Indigenous people from their land as it gets turned into palm oil plantations. In another particularly poignant presentation, Ana Filipini from the World Rainforest Movement showed pictures of deforested areas throughout the world, and finished off saying “If you do not want the whole world to become this, please help us”. Indonesia plans 20 million hectares of new palm oil plantations in the coming years, which has huge ramifications for land rights, greenhouse emissions, and loss of biodiversity. While the UN negotiations are attempting to address deforestation in the developing world, they do not focus on the drivers of this process. In fact, it is the demand for biofuels from industrial nations that is the cause of the expansion of these plantations. Indigenous people, farmers, peasants and people from small islands spoke of the climate change impacts already being felt by their people. Ursula Rakova from the Carteret Islands in Papua New Guinea told the story of her people who are in the process of securing funding so that they can relocate to Bougainville. After years of battling rising sea levels, they now feel they have no choice but to leave. The relocation of people is a topic that is not discussed inside the climate talks, so organisations like Ursula's Tulele Peisa are forced to find funding to relocate themselves. At the international day of action, held on the Saturday in the middle of the negotiations, the diversity of groups present was evidenced by the different banners being carried at the march. Jubilee South called for developed nations to drop the debt owed by undeveloped nations. This would enable them to channel funds into adaptation projects, as well as contribute to a low carbon path to development. La Via Campesina, the international peasants movement was also out in force, promoting the positive solutions to climate change of sustainable small scale farming and local decentralised energy systems. In the conference centre itself, a number of protests were held which aimed to highlight the problems with some of the “false” solutions to climate change such as the use of agrofuels (otherwise know as biofuels), carbon financing, and the problems associated with the involvement of international financial institutions. One such demonstration criticised the establishment of the World Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, which aims to include forests in carbon markets. Ironically, the World Bank is the largest carbon broker in the world, yet continues to provide substantial funding to fossil fuel projects in spite of its own Extractive Industries Review recommending it phase out these projects. At the end of the two weeks, a diverse group of NGOs established an international network, Climate Justice Now! These groups are working on issues ranging from climate refugees to carbon trading and agrofuels to trade and climate change. This network will continue to work to bring voices of affected communities to the negotiations, and to the world, so that we can create climate justice for all. Emma Brindal is the coordinator of the Friends of the Earth Australia Climate Justice Campaign. Source: Science Alert Australia & New Zealand 17/01/08 Guarding the Bali Conference Photo: Prof MKD ( Ben Powless) Protest against the World Bank funding of Fossil Fuels Photo: ProfMKD

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