Wilderness Inc, the Future of Australia's Forests
3/13/00
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Title: Wilderness Inc, the future of our forests
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Status: Copyright 2000, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: March 12, 2000
Byline: James Woodford
The most fundamental revolution in the management of forests since
the invention of the chainsaw is under way in NSW, with State
Government officials planning to regenerate then sell entire
ecosystems.
State Forests predicts that within 10 years its core business of
timber harvesting will be overtaken by the provision of a radical
range of environmental services that companies will pay for. These
include "biodiversity credits" and "conservation credits" on top of
the newly emerging market for carbon credits.
The Minister for Forestry, Mr Yeadon, will release a new Information
Memorandum from State Forests today in which the concept of
biodiversity credits will be outlined.
Companies would pay a bounty to be able to advertise on forest
billboards, in newspapers and other media that they are sponsors of
endangered or rare ecosystems. The sponsoring company which purchased
the conservation or biodiversity credit would then be able to market
itself as being environmentally friendly.
It would have the contractual right to use the ecosystem - which it
had paid to have created - for its own marketing purposes. The change
in philosophy is a complete about-face for State Forests. Instead of
being paid to harvest native forests, it will be paid to keep trees,
according to its general manager, Mr David Brand.
This new concept of credits is based on the idea that a company which
is damaging or polluting one area can compensate for this by
repairing another place.
As pressure on the environment increases, the system may shift from
being voluntary to compulsory.
This is already likely to be the case with carbon credits. The world
community is set to agree this year that companies must pay to grow
forests if they intend to pollute.
Next month, State Forests plans to reveal the full extent of its
vision for new commercial uses of forests at an international
conference it is co-hosting in Sydney.
To obtain a biodiversity or conservation credit, a company would
employ State Forests to regenerate degraded areas with as much of its
previous plant and wildlife as possible.
Mr Brand said State Forests had positioned itself perfectly to take
advantage of the shift in the economic appreciation of forests, with
a network of nurseries, skilled ecologists, land acquisition staff
and forest managers.
"We want to make forestry more of a new age, value-adding industry,"
Mr Brand said. "We are re-inventing the concept of forestry. We are
seeing environment emerging as a major commercial driver."
Airlines and tourism companies already associated themselves with
native animals such as koalas.
"Companies should go to the next stage and take some ownership of the
protection of endangered species," Mr Brand said.
Under the carbon credit scheme, a Japanese power company, TEPCO, will
pay State Forests $30 million to plant an initial 10,000 hectares to
partially compensate for pollution it causes in Japan. It also has an
option to contract State Forests to plant 40,000 hectares, which
would be worth $130 million.
Now State Forests is negotiating with some of Australia's biggest
companies. But the executive director of the Forests Products
Association, Mr Col Dorber, said he was sceptical, especially of the
concept that a company could get "brownie points" in one area, while
destroying or damaging another.
However, the general manager of the native forests division of State
Forests, Mr Graeme King, said the true value of native forests was
now being appreciated. "It's not just an aesthetic judgment," Mr King
said. "It comes down to a real hard dollar appreciation of the
values."
The Nature Conservation Council's executive officer, Ms Kathy Ridge,
said it was "fantastic" that State Forests was finally coming up with
ideas to keep trees in the ground. She said the carbon and salinity
credit schemes had a fundamental flaw - the trees ultimately were to
be harvested.
"It's a paradigm shift from mining the resource to investing in it."
Story Picture: Appreciating the "dollar value" of forests ... State
Forests manager Graeme King in Orara East State Forest, near Coffs
Harbour.