Australia

The compromise agreement reached last July in Bonn on greenhouse gas emissions includes a renegotiated and broadened definition of sinks which allows tree plantations to be included as carbon sinks. This is certainly good news for the carbon investment industry. Not for the Earth's climate though.

In 1997 the Australian federal government issued a regulation for Tasmanian forests, abolishing export woodchip quotas. Consequently North Limited --the biggest woodchip exporter in the country-- announced plans to raise woodchip production from Tasmanian native forests, that currently reaches around 3,4 million tonnes annually. Tasmanian environmental NGOs expressed their concern that this measure would open the gate for the destruction of old-growth eucalyptus forests in the island, which constitute part of the Australian National Heritage (see WRM Bulletin 7).

Vast areas of the southern island of Tasmania in Australia are being planted with tree monocultures as "carbon sinks" and causing concern at different levels (see WRM Bulletin 35). At the same time, the timber industry is also very active in promoting plantations for the production of raw wood material.

The expansion of tree monocultures in Tasmania -which is paradoxically the centre of origin of Eucalyptus globulus, one of the most widely used species for establishing monocultures throughout the world- under the Clean Development Mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol is provoking widespread concern in Australia.

Meeting in Moruya over the weekend the National Forest Summit, Australia's major body representing forest campaign groups, has roundly condemned the federal Government's push for an Australian Forestry Standard in the face of growing calls for "certified" wood. Internationally, consumers are demanding wood products that can be certified as having been sourced from forests that have been managed sustainably. The most well known of these management standards is that developed by the Forest Stewardship Council, which has now certified over 18 million hectares worldwide.

Last November we received a message from the Tasmania based NGO Native Forest Network-Southern Hemisphere (NFN), informing that the Australian giant North Ltd. was planning to invest in pulpwood plantations in Uruguay.

The following letter is being circulated worldwide by a large number of Australian NGOs: "We the undersigned representatives of Australian conservation NGOs are writing to you to express our opposition to the approach taken by our Federal Minister for Forestry and Conservation, Mr. Wilson Tuckey, to regulate independent forest certification schemes at the international level.

Japan's Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has recently signed a letter of intent to participate in a tree plantation project promoted by the state agency State Forests of New South Wales, Australia, allegedly as part of its efforts to tackle global warming. New South Wales established a legal right last November on carbon sequestered from plantations. State forestry bodies in Australia have been looking to market their projects as sinks in the newly created "carbon offsets market" by the Kyoto Protocol. Such initiative is not the only one in the push of Australia to enter this market.

Since the signing of the first of Australia's so-called "Regional Forest Agreements" (RFAs), the Australian forest industry has been deregulated and is open for sale to the highest bidder. The RFAs, having failed to provide a decent reserve system to protect forests have opened up Australia to unlimited export woodchipping and plantation establishment.

For many years the Australian environmental movement has chosen to "lay off" plantations as an issue, as it was seen that in the Australian context, they could be a useful alternative to native forest logging. This situation has now changed with the Tasmanian Greens, for instance, opposing the establishment of any further plantations.

The federal government has handed over the regulation of forests to the state of Tasmania in the country's first state-wide Regional Forests Agreement (RFA). Export woodchip quotas have been abolished in a package giving an unprecedented legally binding guarantee against federal interference in a state's forests. North Limited, the biggest woodchip exporter has already announced plans to raise production from Tasmanian native forests, that currently reaches around 3,4 million tonnes annually.