There will be a major shift in the make-up of New Zealand’s pine forestry – with a large number of sheep and beef farms converted to pine plantations – unless the government makes significant changes to policy.
That is according to “Why Pines?” a new white paper summarising four research projects, all funded by the research body Out Land and Water – each finding that pine plantations would likely replace sheep and beef farming lands under different scenarios.
Speaking to NewsTalk ZB’s Mornings Host, Kerre Woodham, Dr Jenny Webster-Brown, the white paper co-author and director of Our Land and Water, said that while the results “raise significant concerns,” they were not a prediction of an unavoidable future.Â
“These findings, together with national-level modelling of the primary sector, indicate around half of sheep and beef farm area will be replaced by forestry by 2050,” according to the paper, adding that the ETS is part of a growing suite of policy preferences pine plantation above other uses.
“The ETS supports forestry, increasing the revenue to forestry beyond the income from timber alone and making it a more attractive landuse than sheep and beef farming. However, this is something of an artefact with at least three choices embedded in this policy that are subject to change,” Dr Webstar-Brown said:
- The first is creating carbon credits from forests and rules for accounting for them.
- The second is not accounting for carbon sequestration on sheep and beef farms by failing to recognise soil carbon, shelterbelts, and other carbon stores.
- The third is the focus on net emissions rather than decarbonising the economy, which would reduce the value of carbon credits.
“Therefore, attaching carbon credits to forestry is a choice, which raises questions about whether this is a choice the country wants to make.”
- Click here to read the full White Paper, Why Pines? A context for recent research results that appear to support land conversion into pine forestry.
