The carbon method, accused of flooding Australia’s market with weak credits, won endorsement from a committee whose own letter records it could not be confident the draft met the integrity standards without further amendments. That is according to a five-page letter obtained by Wood Central from the community-led Forest and Wood Communities Australia, signed by Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee Chair Karen Hussey last month and sent to Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson.
It comes as critics say the Improved Native Forest Management method risks paying states to shut sustainable timber production while the environmental, economic, and emissions impacts shift elsewhere. In effect, it creates a carbon environment where Australian states like NSW both earn the credits and police the private forestry that could erode them.
Under the method, a state earns Australian Carbon Credit Units by permanently ending harvesting in its public native forests, with NSW set to register the Great Koala National Park as the first project.
“The Committee is disappointed by the proponent’s decision to remove the deferred harvesting activity,” Hussey wrote in the letter, revealing the Committee backed the method at the outset only on the basis that it covered both ceasing and deferring harvest. Her letter records that the design could form the foundation of a broader method for public and private forests alike, a scope NSW stripped back before the rules were made.
Wood Central can reveal that opposition ran deep through the consultation, with 371 submissions across 28 days in January. While many supported the draft, others opposed it, doubting whether the abatement was additional, whether a flat 5 per cent leakage discount was sufficient, and whether outsiders could test the model inputs underlying the credits.
Transparency concessions followed the blowback, with NSW handing the Committee a fully worked scenario from the Full Carbon Accounting Model and agreeing to publish it once the method was made, so outsiders can see how the credits get counted in practice. Wilson made the rules on 25 June, and no new projects can register after the method expires on 30 September 2036.
More changes hardened the baselines, with NSW removing deferred harvesting, capping baselines at the sustainable yield, requiring the yield values that produce the lowest baseline, adjusting for any approvals under the EPBC Act, and agreeing to publish harvest data from private native forests.
Hussey’s committee pushed the leakage rules further still, with the flat 5 per cent discount replaced by a check from an independent expert that can strip up to 40 per cent of a project’s credits, repeated for every reporting period and published each time. That ceiling has already been tested against research showing that the long-run leakage from ended native harvesting is 81.3 per cent.
Even the koala park promise faced the additionality test, with the Committee deeming it reasonable for a state to pursue credits as “the means to deliver an election commitment” and finding a temporary harvesting moratorium appropriate while feasibility is tested.
Attacks now run from the left as well as the industry, with the Australia Institute warning in a 9 July post that the Safeguard Mechanism fails to cut real emissions because polluters can rely on unlimited offsets, the credits this method will mint. The think tank shared an ex-CSIRO scientist’s warning to Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen that the method would produce “bogus” offsets. Those opponents span forestry and farming bodies, rural communities, trade unions, conservation groups, forest managers, and scientists.
Having cleared the method, the Committee still held its ground on harvesting, writing that it “remains convinced” abatement opportunities exist wherever native forest harvesting continues “on any land tenure,” including through the deferred harvesting NSW removed.
It comes as NSW Nationals Senator Ross Cadell lodged a disallowance motion against the method in late June, with the Senate set to vote on 18 August, and Nationals leader Matt Canavan driving a push the Coalition says would stop productive forests from being locked away for a century.
Before a single credit is issued, harvesting inside a project area must run at least 20 per cent below the baseline in every 12-month period of the 15-year crediting life, according to the notice attached to Hussey’s letter. Any statewide rise in harvesting across years 16 to 100 of a project then forces the state to cancel credits it has already banked.
Please note: Wood Central has not taken an editorial stance on Australia’s native forest debate. It will, however, publish content that it deems to be in the public interest, and it will fact-check before publishing.
