Forestry needs your money, land and water

Opinion

Here’s what we’ve learned in Tasmania about forestry: By Mike Bolan

• Woodchips are a big loss maker. The forestry industry can only do woodchipping because governments provide massive subsidies. In Tasmania total subsidies/free resources/legal exemptions amount to over $200 million per year to return ‘profits’ of around $60 million.
• Plantations drain lots of water from catchments, about 2Ml/ha/yr.
• To keep the favours and money flowing, forestry has populated governments and boards with supporters who bias decisions in forestry’s favour at all opportunities. Public appeals to reason usually fail.
• Forestry sees climate change as an opportunity to increase its power and money by converting food producing land into tree plantations to ‘sequester’ carbon.
• The industry has coaxed environmental groups, such as the Wilderness Society (TWS), to support plantations as if that will save the forests.

Tasmania’s forestry wars have been about how our scarce land and water resources will be used, and who will pay for the conversion of our food producing land to trees.

A massive 35 million ha of plantations (350,000 sq.km) are planned for Australia as a ‘carbon sink’ to trade for pollution permits. Plantation MIS schemes collapsed at $10,000 per ha (public subsidy $3200 ha, ‘investors’ coughed the rest) so we’ll have to pay more; that’s over $350 billion (about $32,000 per taxpayer) to go into forestry pockets.

Meanwhile investment groups get fabulous returns – at 10 tonnes/ha/year growth, 35 m/ha will create 350 m/t of offsets accumulating each year (700 m/t in yr 2 and so on). At $20 a tonne that’s some big bikkies.

It’s a system that geometrically returns money while exempting polluters from reducing emissions and lets the government off the debt hook.

The downside: Australia will have to dedicate all of its water to plantations, we’ll lose most of our food producing land, our forests will still be cut down for hardwoods, forestry will be Australia’s biggest industry and thirsty taxpayers will have to pick up the tab.

In Tasmania, while TWS is organising a plantation seminar, private citizens have had to reveal that forestry is meanwhile down the Tarkine, one of our last remaining wilderness areas.

Mike Bolan is a Tasmania-based complex systems consultant and also contributes to www.thoughtpolicegazette.com.