Carbon experts at Australia’s peak science body for forestry have found that the new method for crediting an end to native forest harvesting could overstate its climate benefit by more than 40 per cent, potentially up to 100 per cent, before leakage or harvested wood products are accounted for. Millions of credits could therefore enter Australia’s carbon market with nothing behind them, with Forestry Australia concluding that the Improved Native Forest Management (INFM) Method being pushed by the Albanese government and Josh Wilson, the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy, must not be relied on to issue Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) until its accounting and modelling problems are fixed.
“There are fundamental problems with this Method,” Dr Michelle Freeman, Forestry Australia President, said of prescribed maths the association found is built to issue more credits than the climate benefit achieved. Freeman said the body supports credible investment in forest carbon and accepts that avoided harvesting can deliver genuine gains in some cases, but every ACCU issued must represent a real, additional, and accurately measured tonne.
The sums don’t add up on day one
Fifteen years is the first fault line identified in the briefing note published yesterday afternoon, a window far shorter than the 100 years used by the Plantation Forestry Method and one that excludes most of the regrowth a harvested forest puts back over the decades that follow. That makes the baseline forest appear to store less carbon than it really would, and Forestry Australia’s testing shows correcting the window alone could cut the estimated benefit by more than 40 per cent.
Credits arrive before the carbon does
Upfront over-crediting is built into the structure, with credits issued on the gap between the project forest and the baseline straight after a hypothetical harvest, then partly clawed back in later reports as the baseline regrows. Keeping the benefit visible depends on continually adding new no-harvest areas, and any over-credit still standing at year 15 is never reconciled, an approach the association knows of in no other method in the world.
The model assumes a harvest that rarely happens
FullCAM is misapplied next, the Australian Government’s own carbon accounting tool for estimating how much carbon a forest holds and releases, which the Method runs on clearfall assumptions, despite more than 80 per cent of native harvesting being selective or partial. Those settings do not match those used in Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory, and fixing the model could cut the estimated benefit by more than 50 per cent, depending on forest type, harvesting system, and the version of the tool used.
It comes as New South Wales relies on the Method to fund the Great Koala National Park, with the state set to register the park as the first project, and Karen Hussey, chair of the committee that ensures ACCU method integrity, telling senators its creation depends on INFM’s approval in parliament. For its measure, the NSW government has promoted 22 million credits over 15 years from ending harvesting in its public native forests, an overstatement that, according to Forestry Australia’s worked example, could leave 11 million of those ACCUs with no real carbon behind them.
Leakage, the harvesting that shifts elsewhere when one forest closes, is capped rather than measured, with the Method limiting the deduction to 40 per cent even where an independent assessment finds a higher rate. International timber leakage from avoided harvesting has been reported at up to 95 per cent, so projects could be credited for carbon savings that never occurred globally.
Self-declaration substitutes for an additionality test, with eligibility resting on whether harvesting reductions are new and on the state’s own word that they would not have happened anyway. A state can also generate and sell ACCUs while counting the same reductions towards its own targets, a double-counting path that private landholders are explicitly barred from.
The intervention follows more than 12 months of requests through the consultation process, during which Forestry Australia repeatedly sought the FullCAM files and the details needed to reproduce the claimed results, but materials were never released alongside any issues log or public reply. Material changes were also made to the Method after consultation closed, without further independent testing, in a process that the body contrasts with Queensland’s handling of its Avoided Reforestation and Afforestation Method.
The concerns have been panned by the unions representing the workers, with the Timber and Forestry Trade Union rejecting the Method as “dead on arrival.” Late last month, National Secretary Michael O’Connor said the Method mistakes passive lock-up for credible carbon policy and should be scrapped, adding to a field of critics that already ran from professional foresters to former government scientists.
“It is not possible to create reliable carbon credits,” Dr John Raison, the former CSIRO chief research scientist who helped build FullCAM, warned Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen in an open letter this month. Forestry Australia’s testing now puts a number on the modelling fault Raison identified, with the clearfall settings carrying the single largest correction in the analysis.
The Method now faces a formal Senate test, with Nationals Senator Ross Cadell lodging a disallowance motion set down for debate when parliament returns in August. A successful vote would void the determination, and with Labor defending its own instrument, the deciding votes are expected to rest with the Greens.
Forestry Australia raised all concerns during consultation and remains ready, as noted in the records, to provide technical expertise on credible carbon methods across all forest types and tenures. Based on the now-public evidence, the body representing more than 1,150 forest scientists, managers, professionals, and growers concludes that the Method should not be relied on to issue a single credit until its accounting holds up.
