“Today the Australian Government launched a Global Initiative on Forests and Climate. This represents a material advance in the global effort to tackle climate change and protect the world’s forests, according to a media release from the office of the Australian Prime Minister.
The media release continued, “the Australian Government has committed $200 million to kickstart this world leading initiative that will reduce significantly global greenhouse gas emissions.
Almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing the world’s forests – second only to emissions from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, and more than all of the world’s emissions from transport.
Globally, more than 4.4 million trees are removed every day or 1.6 billion trees each year – almost 1 billion of which are not replaced. An area twice the size of Tasmania is currently cleared each year – this is the equivalent of removing around 71,000 football fields of trees every day.
If the world could halve the rate of global deforestation we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year – more than five times Australia’s total annual emissions and about ten times the emissions reductions that will be achieved during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
Reducing deforestation, planting new forests, and investing in sustainable forest management practice are among the best ways to reduce global emissions now.
Working with both developed and developing countries the Australian Government’s $200 million investment will:
• support new forest planting;
• limit destruction of the world’s remaining forests;
• promote sustainable forest management; and
• encourage contributions from other countries.
Specific activities include:
• building developing countries’ technical capacity to assess their forest resources;
• putting in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging; and
• promoting the sustainable use of forest resources and diversifying the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
Since Kyoto negotiations began more than a decade ago, Australia has consistently and strongly argued for effective international action on deforestation as an essential part of the global response to climate change.
Through this initiative we will work with like-minded countries and will be inviting nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan and Indonesia to join the Initiative. We will also work with international organisations including the World Bank, and businesses, to reduce emissions from deforestation and to sustainably manage the world’s forests.
Harnessing our combined resources will make a difference for world forests and the climate.
This Initiative also builds on the almost $20 billion invested by the Australian Government for the environment over the past 11 years.
The Global Initiative on Forests and Climate delivers practical action that will substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Facts Sheet
The Australian Government is providing $200 million for ‘Global Initiative on Forests and Climate’. This funding will be used to support projects in selected developing countries (particularly, but not exclusively, in the South-East Asia and Pacific regions) to:
• build technical capacity to assess and monitor forest resources, and to develop national forest management plans;
• put in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging;
• promote the sustainable use of forest resources and diversify the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
• support practical research into the drivers of deforestation;
• encourage reforestation of degraded forest areas;
• develop and deploy the technology and systems needed to help developing countries monitor and produce robust assessments of their forest resources;
• pilot approaches to providing real financial incentives to countries and communities to encourage sustainable use of forests and reduce destruction of forests.
These projects will be developed in cooperation with regional countries and relevant international organisations including the World Bank. They will reflect the priorities of the countries concerned, while seeking to achieve the maximum possible benefit for forest management and the global climate.
In relation to the provision of incentives to developing countries for sustainable forestry practices and reducing net forest loss, we expect to explore a range of approaches that reflect the differing needs and circumstances of different countries. However, a common element of any incentives is that they will be provided only on the achievement of pre-agreed forest sustainability milestones (e.g. agreed reductions in national deforestation rates). Measurement of achievement of these milestones will be underpinned by the investment in the technology and systems to robustly monitor forest resources.
Effectively tackling the issue of global deforestation will require a huge investment from governments and businesses around the world. The Australian Government will therefore be working closely with governments and businesses from other developed countries to build support for and help in the delivery of this global initiative, so that we can harness the collective effort required.
The contributions that other countries may make will obviously be a matter for them, but we will be talking to key countries about the initiative over the next few weeks. Those discussions will also address the most effective means for countries to mutually identify areas and projects for joint activity, and how best to form clusters of partners to undertake those activities.
As a soon as we have a good initial picture of the views of key countries and others, we will decide how best to proceed with this initiative, including through engaging key Ministers from these countries.
Planning and delivery of the Initiative in Australia will involve a whole of government effort, including through the Environment, Foreign Affairs (including AusAID) and Forestry Departments.” [End of media release.]
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Cinders: This latest federal announcement on the environment should add great value in time to all Tasmanian “timber” still standing.
Last night Howard said he didn’t think limiting imports of illegal timber into the country was a good idea. Meanwhile, a glowing report on the Howard Government’s attitude to biodiversity in this country:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1885330.htm
$200 million australian dollars to plant trees. And i read here (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1885105.htm) that the government is looking to tackle air travel emissions too.
Dearie me, a lot of money dumping and winner picking going on. The IPA must be horrified. How can you trust the govt to pick the best solutions? How about emissions trading and be done with it?
This is what happens when you get a government who is trying so hard to appear credible while at the same time doing everything to avoid addressing the main problem (emissions from coal) because they would lose face, esp with their resource industry buddies.
Except that NO party is outright proposing the only obviously affordable and reliable solution which can make really big cuts in our emissions in ten years time – nuclear power.
I agree that the media release above( and this http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200702/s1856629.htm ) are nothing more than tokenistic gestures to appease special interests but what to do when the real alternatives can’t be canvassed without letting the hounds of hysteria loose?
With the honourable exception of Luke , the supposedly strictly-scientific-AGW-rationalist crowd loses it’s reason as soon as the topic comes up.
I’m happy for nuclear power to compete with other technologies jim. though i think you’ll find it is not as ‘affordable’ as you seem to think it is.
I’d put the cost of electricity from nuclear in Australia as twice the current cost of coal, (ziggy reckons 1.5x as much) which puts it on par with wind energy and more expensive than gas.
So to put than into dollars:
For a 2000MW nuke station to compete with a 2000MW coal station, (assuming 80% capacity factor) then the nuke station will need on the order of $490 million PER YEAR in extra income (e.g. from subsidies or from carbon credits).
The ‘real alternative’ as you put it, isn’t to have the government just pick nuclear. its to have a technology neutral approach that lets the market determine the best technology. If emissions trading came in now, then we wouldn’t be seeing a contribution from nuclear for at least 15-20 years, whereas wind, bioenergy, solar hot water and energy efficiency can be going in now, at the same price as nuclear or cheaper.
Agreed – affordable obviously does not = cheap but I don’t know of any other solution than nuclear which ;
1. is affordable ( even a doubling of electricity costs could be absorbed without too much economic trauma)
2. the technology currently exists
3. can actually meet the current and future power needs ; baseload and peak
4. is greenhouse gas friendly
That’s not to say we abandon research into solar , geo-thermal ( wind seems too problematic ) and other renewables, just that if we really have to DO SOMETHING!!!! to actually reduce emissions then nuclear appears to be the best option.
I wonder how the darker albedo (and warming) from planting trees in temperate areas might balance out against the CO2 sequestration benefits?
On nuclear – does it come down to the baseload argument?
Seems to me this policy is about deforestation rather than comparing forestry in Australia and in Developing country’s.
The Asia- Pacific forestry Commission’s ‘In Search of Excellence’ published by the UN FAO and the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre for Asia and Pacific has some excellent examples of sustainable forestry (including Southern Tasmania).
This new initiative is about valueing our forests and slowing deforestation. Deforestation is the permanent removal of the forest and a change to another land use; actively preventing the forest to be regrown (not to be confused with forestry which is all about maintaining it productive capacity and regerating after harvest).
The Stern report states ” Changes in land use account for 18% of global emissions. This is driven almost entirely by emissions from deforestation. Deforestation is highly concentrated in a few countries. Currently around 30% of land-use emissions are from Indonesia and a further 20% from Brazil.(Part 3 Box 7.1)
However in Tasmania, a growing forest sector is a major contributor to the State being able to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from the Kyoto base year.
Agree with Jim – going with nuclear works with or without gorebull warbling.
Wind is undesirable from many aspects – eg rather live near a nuke power station than a windfarm.
Concerning solar has anyone seen a greenhouse balance sheet on the production and installation of acres of soalr cells? ( I appreciate pv cells are not the only solar technology).
Geo thermal always sounds good but not too sure we would be able to provide much of this in the not too distant future. Nevertheless by all means keep looking and trying.
BUT I wonder how many people who are adherents of the current greenhouse religion really understand that their power bills are going to skyrocket whatever technology is used.
These numbers sound a bit suss. If total anthropogenic CO2 is 7Gt and landuse change is 19% then total LUC emissions are only 1.33Gt.
So where does this claim come from? “If the world could halve the rate of global deforestation we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year”
For this to be true we would need 6Gt in annual LUC emissions. But from only 1.33Gt at present?
They must have factored in the emissions from a continuation of the broadscale clearfiring by the boys and girls at National Sparks and Wildfires.
Lawrie:
* rather live near nuke than wind: speak for yourself mate!!
* greenhouse balance on solar power: yes. PV energy payback is 3-6 years, high temperature solar thermal energy payback is much much better than PV. energy payback is a good proxy for greenhouse. If the power station takes 3 years to pay the energy back and has a life of 30 years, then it is good for greenhouse.
* on geothermal time frames: that sounds about the same as the time frame for both nuclear and clean coal in Australia.
* on power bills: if by skyrocketing, you mean between 1.5 and 3 times more expensive per kWh, then yes i understand that, no problem for me, since i only use 5kWh per day in my house.
Luke, on nukes and baseload: yes, nukes can provide baseload which is not currently an option for wind. However, this limitation of wind is evident in the price. Lets not try and pick the winner, let the market sort it out. When there is too much wind on the grid, the price will rise and nukes will become more competitive, but at the moment, wind is competitive. That might change in about 15 years in australia.
Motty,
There are many strange maths going on here, why do you think they talk in footy fields, is that Soccer, Aussie rules, Grid Iron or what?
In Tasmania we have Tasmania has 1,885,300 hectares (or 97%of High Quality wilderness reserved for its high conservation and tourist values). A hectare equates to an area of 100m by 100m, just over half the playing surface of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
That is our wilderness never to be woodchipped or pulped is 2.7 million rugby fields (a hectare), 3.5 million grid iron fields(lesa than a hectare), 3.7 million soccer fields(just over 3/4 hectare or over a million Aussie Rules football fields (about 1.8 ha).
Given that “burning fossil fuels to produce electricity” is foremost in producing anthropogenic climate change from global greenhouse gas emissions, why doesn’t the Australian Government simply increase equalised tariffs to accommodate the costs of mitigation and adaptation strategies?
Is it because Australians simply do not want to pay? (I ask because the deflection of concern onto Australian forestry practices has become something of a national pastime, and yet nothing tangible is seen to be done to achieve full cost-recovery in the supply of cheap electricity.
Powerbills will skyrocket when they plug in these desalinators – the one for Sydney, at 900GWh annually is reported to add another 1.5% to the States growing power budget, the one for central Coast will be parked next to Vales Pt coal fired power station.
The perceived need to have ‘green power’ will see the hydro pumping more water than it has and wind farms turning in still weather conditions.
the only RATIONAL commenters here pre-decide nuclear as the clear winner, don’t defer to markets. Let em compete on fair ground, sans subsidies and other forms of govt greasing the wheels for industry through market manipulation.
I haven’t seen any CBA that’s comprehensive or clear sighted enough to claim nuclear the winner so what’s the secret info source of the nuclear-wins-all crowd? If you want to reify markets than stop trying to pick winners that fit your favoured hegemony.
Above we see the usual assumption that massively centralised infrastructure is the only medium and long term answer. That outlook has socialist parallels. Let’s commoditise energy and let all technologies and all size of players compete openly, no govt favours.
a lot of baseload usage is unnecessary. It can be manually corrected, plus over time we can have smarter grid networks, moving market prices, smarter appliances and prioritising use (critical uses to get baseload & redundancy)
Doesnt worry me Pinxi, bring it on.
Of course the various union influenced State ALP wont have a bar of it, decentralisation and privatisation are verboten, nyet nyet nyet. Lets have a CBA on privatisation of the energy industry (oh, we already know that it works but we’ll have another symposium eh comrades)
What a load of bollocks Pinxi – I certainly didn’t say anything about pre-determined winners.
Happy to leave it to the market – but if it’s to be a free-for-all where the winner stands on it’s merits then nuclear has to be a real consideration.
For that to be the case then ignorance , superstition and politics have to be minimised and the consumer should get accurate information.
If current technology wind , solar , geo-thermal or clean coal solutions can compete with nuclear on the basis of affordability , speed and quantum of emissions reductions , baseload provision and reliability then I’m all for them.
BTW – if true market forces are to operate then we change nothing.
Coal wins hands down , the possible costs in 100 years time are not the markets concern.
Jim
exactly the problem. In 100 years it will be my children’s children’s concern. A lot of people now don’t seem to care at all for our legacy. One of the problem’s of a market. It has no practical concept of the long term, even if in theoretical terms it does.
It’s like a Pacific Solution for Trees.
If true market forces are to apply then there is no room for a carbon tax because that is clearly a market intervention. Isn’t it?
Or is what we are seeing here nothing more than an elaborate justification for a new type of GST? A consumption tax levied on carbon in a way that allows revenue to be collected without actually raising the GST percentage?
And make no mistake, there can be no carbon credits without a system of carbon penalties. Even a reversed credit will still operate as a carbon tax.
And if governments are going to raise revenue by this new tax then they will need a substantial drop in conventional income tax.
The green/left duped into supporting a flat tax system? I love it?
Exactly Ian – this sudden conversion to market based solutions isn’t quite what it seems!
Jim,
Re: “the possible costs in 100 years time are not the markets concern”.
Section 3.5.2 of the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment; stipulates ‘intergenerational equity’; where the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations’.
Our collective understanding, that affordable electricity is causing deleterious climate change, enunciates environmental concewrn.
As such, under the nationally binding principle that polluter pays, an increase in equalised tariffs to accommodate the necessary costs of mitigation is necessary.
This is just the usual lies from the Howard Government. As I write this post HUGE forestry burnoffs are occurring over the entire state of Tasmania.
Giant monoculture tree plantations (that replace mostly native forests but also destroyed farms and associated infrastructure) are the reason for a huge rise in CO2 emissions from ‘forestry’ in this country.
After most of the biomass and forest floor of old established native forest is piles up and burnt after clearfelling the next stage kicks in. The one-crop single-species trees are planted to replace this biodiversity. These woodchip stick trees are harvested every 12 or so years, again with everything burnt, using napalm like substances, except for harvest of tree trunks for the woodchipper.
For more about this latest delusion see:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/plantations/material/carbon.html
and
http://www.geocities.com/rosserbj/ForestryBurnoffs.html
$200 million? Gesture politics.
There are many benefits from planting trees but carbon sequestration is not one of them. It is a bit like drinking water to stop the oceans rising. Likewise carbon sequestration in bedrock is pretty dumb because there is already 20 quadrillion tons of it in the earths crust. It is high time we dropped this improbable hypothesis of a people driven climate and did something genuine about the worlds problems.
Economic models assume the participants in the economy can forsee into the future. They make no assumptions on the ability of the participants to consider those who come after them.
Brendan Tosser said, “are the reason for a huge rise in CO2 emissions from ‘forestry’ in this country”, which is a complete load of ignorant bollocks.
His tiny brain cannot process the fact that the carbon in a plantation or regrowth forest, especially a 12 year old one as in his example, has been absorbed by the growing trees on what, in most cases, was a bare paddock before the trees were planted or regenerated.
And if he had even a partial grasp of the brief he would know that the wood that is converted to woodchip and paper will end up in a landfill where the carbon will be stored safely for more than 60 years, during which time the forest will have grown back to produce three or four more crops of chip logs (which will also be stored in a landfill).
And while any remaining slash after harvest will be burnt, it, too was absorbed from the atmosphere only recently and will be re-absorbed as the forest regrows.
But to his credit, at least he was inadvertently honest when he refered to his links with the words, “for more about this (his) latest delusion”.
And all this after the greens have sat by while 1.2 million hectares of forest was blast furnaced due to management policies guided by the ignorance of the Tossers of this world.
Where do they get these people? Is there some sort of half way house for gonzos where they encourage them to try their hand at forest policy as an alternative to therapeutic basket weaving?
Will someone get him a jar of Vas and a Playboy mag?
Hey Skimmer; whoz the biggest tosser here?
I bet Ian ohh Motty! all “his ” grey matter – “are the reason for a huge rise in CO2 emissions from ‘forestry’ in this country” etc are keenly focused on big forestry ops damn them in my old country and bringing up a bunch of kids at Wynyard High or Burnie College.
The plantations at say Preolenna are hardly carbon neutral headed as they are mostly into woodchip process then trash n burn.
Ian has never seen the oldgrowth forest as it was up the Flowerdale or the Inglis and Calder.
Let’s ignore my experience in the P & P industry for a mo. There is a large but closed and covered land fill dump about 2 k from my window. It has been wholly converted to gas collection for electricity generation in a small plant. Links-
http://www.nowaste.act.gov.au/aboutus
http://www.actewagl.com.au/Education/energy/electricity/ElectricityDistribution/ElectricitySupplyInACT.aspx
Is this “green” energy adding to “greenhouse” in a destructive way?
How much is coming from cellulose?
When will it run out?
My compost bins recycle kitchen waste and paper at about the same rate. I can empty 1 out of 3, at least 4 times a year.
See also ABS – Measuring Australia’s progress 2002