OECD Report Backs Forester Ownership

MEDIA STATEMENT

Tuesday 10 April 2007

For Immediate Release

OECD Report Backs Forester Ownership Of Carbon Credits

Investors and owners of post-1990 forests are delighted the world’s most respected international economic organisation, the OECD, has endorsed the New Zealand forestry industry’s position on the ownership of carbon credits, and implicitly criticised the Government’s approach to the issue.

In its Environmental Performance Review of New Zealand report, the OECD found that “government retention of forestry carbon sink credits may have contributed to the weakening of incentives to expand plantations” and recommended that the Government “give consideration to allocating carbon sink credits and liabilities to forest owners”.

The Kyoto Forestry Association (KFA), which represents the more than 30,000 “mum and dad” investors who planted new forests in the 1990s, said it hoped the Government and all political parties would accept the OECD’s finding and recommendation.

“The Government has been in denial over recent months that its decision in 2002 to confiscate carbon credits earned by forest owners since 1990 has caused new forest plantings to plunge to below replacement levels,” KFA spokesman Roger Dickie said today. “Let’s hope the Government will listen more closely to the OECD than it has to the New Zealand forestry industry, which has been saying exactly the same thing for some years.”

Mr Dickie said forest owners were prepared to accept both the carbon credits and liabilities associated with post-1990 forests, as the OECD suggests, and were disappointed Forestry Minister Jim Anderton had chosen over recent months to misrepresent this position through the media as part of his continual attacks on the industry.

Nevertheless, Mr Dickie hoped the Minister, or Prime Minister Helen Clark, would be prepared to accept industry and international advice on the issue.

“The Green Party, the Maori Party, the National Party and ACT have all made statements in recent weeks broadly in line with what KFA and the wider forestry industry have been arguing, and the Federation of Maori Authorities is preparing to take a case to the Waitangi Tribunal in support of the industry’s position,” Mr Dickie said.

“With the OECD also saying broadly the same thing as the forestry industry and parties representing 60 seats in Parliament, the time is surely approaching for Mr Anderton or the Prime Minister to accept that we can’t all be wrong and that their policy needs revisiting.”

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