Planned exotic conversion limit supported
Cr Kevin Malcolm's comments came after the government announced yesterday legislation to impose restrictions on large-scale farm-to-forestry conversions.
The government is proposing a limit of 15,000 hectares per year for exotic conversions on medium-versatility farmland, while it will also restrict farm conversions to exotic Emissions Trading Scheme forests on high- to medium-versatility farmland.
Cr Malcolm said the changes were timely given the market situation.
"At the moment, the commodity prices have been down, and the carbon scheme has been set up in such a way that people are making a lot of money out of it without actually fixing the pollution problem, so somehow we need to stop.
"Once that land goes into the marginal, the breeding properties go into forestry, they won't be going back into production again.
"Look, to be honest, the carbon scheme, to me, is just a great big Ponzi scheme for polluters to try to avoid the responsibility of fixing up their pollution."
Cr Malcolm said he understood the previous government's ideas behind the "one billion trees" initiative, but he felt it had not been rolled out satisfactorily.
"We need to ensure that we get the right tree in the right place, and that we're not losing good, productive Otago farmland to a carbon scheme that clearly doesn't solve climate pollution issues."
Cr Malcolm said when the Emissions Trading Scheme was first announced, and the billion trees initiative came into place, it was expected landowners would "go into their ugly blocks on their properties and over time plant them out into trees".
"And it was a good intent, if you know what I mean, and that would have solved our genuine unfixable pollution issues.
"But they never sat down and looked at the money-makers that would not reflect the intent of that billion trees."
Cr Tim Mepham said the new legislation seemed to be reasonable at a glance.
"It appears to be aimed at preventing high- to medium-versatility farmland being converted to carbon forestry.
"It's important to understand the benefits between commercial forestry, which include pruning, processing and exporting logs, and the passive plant and leave carbon forestry that this legislation is targeting.
"It also seems reasonable that farmers can still plant up to 25% of their property in exotics. It would be good to see the ETS amended to provide equivalent credits for native plantings as it does for radiata."
Cr Elliot Weir sympathised with where the legislation was coming from, "as there are real concerns about farm-to-forest conversion, from food resilience to the spread of wilding pines to the overreliance on rather flammable exotic pines for carbon capture".
"In isolation though, this lowers the credibility of this government's already sketchy emissions reduction plan."
Southern Wood Council chairman Grant Dodson said there had been a consistent and strong resistance from the farming community about conversions of typically sheep and beef land into forest land.
"That's been change that's happened. I think the sheep numbers in New Zealand have been in decline since the early 1980s.
"So the government's obviously got some concerns around that.
"It's probably a little bit unfortunate, I think, from a forestry perspective. It limits people's options."
matthew.littlewood@odt.co.nz
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