Parker’s “Divide-And-Rule” Strategy Will Fail

Climate Change Minister David Parker’s attempt yesterday to divide the forestry industry will fail, the Kyoto Forestry Association (KFA) said today.

“All the major forestry industry groups are united against the Government’s plans to confiscate the carbon credits earned by forest owners since 1990 – and we are deeply concerned about the deforestation that is occurring as a result of the Government’s policies,” KFA Spokesman Roger Dickie said.

“Mr Parker can resort to personal smears against me if he likes, but that will not change the reality that the industry is united against government policy that is fuelling deforestation and taking us further away from the Prime Minister’s carbon-neutrality goal.”

Mr Dickie said that last year the New Zealand Forest Owners Association (NZFOA), the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association (NZFFA), the Federation of Maori Authorities (FOMA) and KFA united around a six-point plan to get forest planting underway again. In the last fortnight, that plan has again been unanimously endorsed by forest owners at NZFOA meetings Christchurch and Rotorua. Forest owners also resolved to reject and campaign against the Government’s confiscation plans.

“Mr Parker’s Government has a serious problem because unless it is prepared to start listening to the united voice of the forestry industry – the one industry actually capable of sequestering carbon – it will face unrelenting criticism and condemnation through to the next election.”

Mr Dickie said that Mr Parker’s assertions that forest owners have no ownership right to carbon credits for forests planted since 1990 was at odds with assurances given by government officials through the 1990s and advice from the Treasury.

“Forest owners both created the credits – by investing their own money through the 1990s – and control whether or not those credits continue to exist. That is the essence of a property right and Mr Parker saying otherwise will not change that fact.

“Mr Parker needs to ask himself what would happen if forest owners exercised their legal right to take chainsaws or matches to their trees right now.”

Mr Dickie said that private investors had put up as much as $400 million per annum of their own risk capital through the 1990s to invest in forestry because of the benefits predicted to arise both from the sale of logs and the sale of carbon credits which come from carbon sequestered in their forests.

“Those were calculated business investment decisions based on the assurances of government officials through the 1990s. Forest owners cannot accept their property being confiscated from them, and it is an insult for the Government to say that we are seeking ‘windfall’ profits. We just want what is rightfully ours,” Mr Dickie said.

The New Zealand Forestry Industry’s Six-Point Plan:

• 1. Remove the inequitable, retrospective ‘deforestation cap’.
  


• 2. Allow land owners with Kyoto-qualifying forests (forests planted from 1990) – as well as those replanting non-Kyoto forests after harvest – to financially benefit from the value of the carbon their forests remove from the atmosphere.
  


• 3. Introduce broad-based carbon charges, ensuring that all emitters of greenhouse gases face the same opportunity costs.
  


• 4. Ensure that New Zealand’s Kyoto policies have the best long-term outcomes for New Zealand, even if they don’t exactly mirror current Kyoto rules.
  


• 5. Develop a regime which puts a value on the environmental attributes of forestry, thereby encouraging investment in the sector.
  


• 6. Act immediately.
  

ENDS

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