Friday, March 29, 2024

Tree planting plan lacks clarity

Neal Wallace
The Government’s billion-tree planting programme lacks clarity with ministers delivering conflicting messages, Canterbury University expert Professor Euan Mason says.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Until there is consistency on the policy’s objective, definitive decisions cannot be made on where trees are planted, species, planting incentives and the economic and social impacts.

Regional Development Minister Shane Jones views the policy as regional economic development and carbon sequestering as part of climate change policy.

Others, including some Green Party ministers, view the policy as boosting biodiversity.

“It appears not to be explicitly stated and agreed upon by Cabinet,” Mason said.

If the programme is regional development and climate change policy then exotics such as pine and some eucalyptus species have to be the dominant species planted.

They rapidly sequester carbon, needed for NZ to meet its 2050 zero-carbon goal, because pines sequester 30 tonnes of carbon dioxide a hectare a year. Native species sequester between three and nine tonnes a hectare a year.

Mason said the programme will really mean 500 million trees being planted with the balance replacing harvested woodlots.

Land is available on which to plant them.

A Canterbury University study revealed 1.3m hectares of erosion-prone land, mostly in Gisborne and Wairarapa but throughout the country, that is best suited to tree planting.

Some of that could be plantation forestry and some permanent but a definitive policy position from the Government will help decide what species is planted where.

“There are so many unknowns that it is very hard to say with any clarity what is going to happen, such as the type of planting and what species will be.”

For NZ to be carbon neutral by 2050, 1.75m hectares of exotic trees are needed to sequester carbon and complement emission reductions.

But that area will have to expand the greater the planted area of lower sequestering natives.

August’s Productivity Commission report on a low-emissions economy estimated up to 2.8m hectares of forestry is needed, mostly on land used for sheep and beef farming.

Mason doubts the economic impact of such a tree-planting programme will be negative because it will target unproductive or erosion-prone land, however, depending on the size of Government planting incentives productive land could be switched from livestock to trees.

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