Pure Advantage endorses the PCE report Alt-F Reset: Examining the Drivers of Forestry in New Zealand. It especially supports the Commissioner’s conclusion that New Zealand needs to take a long, hard look at our approach to forestry and ask whether we are establishing the forests we need for the future.

The PCE report is incredibly timely as Aotearoa New Zealand and the world is facing unprecedented climate change. The 1.5 degrees atmospheric warming target has already been exceeded, and increasingly severe weather events are becoming the new normal, with massive impacts on both environment and society.

Pure Advantage agrees with the PCE that the reliance on fast growing exotic trees like radiata pine to sequester atmospheric CO2 (so called carbon farming) is setting up massive environmental and economic liabilities for future generations that are not being considered by either Government or those promoting carbon farming.

Pure Advantage’s strategic science advisor, Professor David Norton, argues that: “Carbon farming is essentially treating the climate emergency as just another opportunity to make money while ignoring these future liabilities. It is morally corrupt. Sadly, the recent proposal by Government to use public conservation land for even more carbon farming reinforces this approach”.

Pure Advantage acknowledges the higher costs of establishing and maintaining native forests but believes that the benefits far outweigh the risks of continuing to plant fast growing exotic pine trees. To this effect, the PCE’s recommendation that the Emissions Trading Scheme requires major reform is fully supported by Pure Advantage.

Professor Norton believes that having a narrow focus on the carbon income generated by afforestation misses the key benefit for Aotearoa New Zealand of large-scale native afforestation, namely the development of landscape resilience.

“By weaving native forests and wetlands throughout our catchments, we can build resilience at a landscape scale to the increasingly severe storm events that we are already experiencing and are going to experience more and more because of the atmospheric heating that has already occurred.”

Pure Advantage has developed and promoted Recloaking Papatūānuku as a sustainable long-term initiative to restore and enhance 2 million ha of native forest across Aotearoa for landscape resilience, to enhance native biodiversity, to provide for social and cultural values for Māori and Pākehā alike, and to sequester atmospheric CO2. This PCE report is an invaluable contribution in support of this initiative, especially the call for substantial reform of the ETS.

However, Pure Advantage notes that native afforestation should never be considered as a substitute for genuine emissions reductions, New Zealand needs these urgently as well.

© Scoop Media