15 April 2013

The deforestation intentions of forest owners have soared as the prices of emission units have plunged, making it economic to convert forests to other land uses, especially on land suitable for dairy farms.

A survey of large forest owners (with over 10,000 ha) by Professor Bruce Manley of Canterbury University has found they intend to deforest 39,000 ha between now and 2020, mainly in the central North Island and mainly to switch to dairy farming.

Assuming smaller forest owners only replant 80 per cent of the forests they harvest in the same period, the total area deforested would be 55,000 ha or 12 per cent of the area of plantation forest maturing in that period.

This represents a steep increase in the amount of deforestation the large forest owners said they expected to do in Manley's previous survey in 2011 on the assumption that the ETS would remain in place.

That survey indicated that their expected total deforestation between 2008 and 2020 would be just 17,000 ha, not the 62,000 ha recorded in the latest survey.

Instead it is closer to the 58,000 ha of deforestation they said then that they would do if there was no ETS. The reason for the increase is the dramatic drop in carbon prices, which means the costs of deforestation emissions are too low to influence land user decisions.

Source: Story by Brian Fallow, NZ Herald. To read the full story, click here.