“IN A blow to Victoria’s massive plantation industry, the State Government has moved to make thirsty timber plantations accountable for the water they use.
“Companies such as Timbercorp may face extra costs as Government documents show it is considering making them pay for the water the trees suck up…
Read more here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/environment/plan-to-make-timber-industry-pay-for-rain/2008/05/10/1210131335198.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Who owns the rain ?
Carr believed his Govt owned the lithosphere to the centre of the core
Gosh, do you mean there are serious environmental disadvantages in shutting down perfectly good native forests and replacing them with clonal monocultures that can only get by with a massive taxpayer subsidy?
Do you mean that there are serious implications for downstream water volume, and therefore quality, in growing second rate wood in second rate habitat on first quality agricultural land?
Do you mean that these glorified weeds CAN’T maintain the full suite of wildlife AND produce high quality wood at the same time like native forests do?
Goodness me, who would have thought of it?
Who would have thought that governments in Australia could actively promote a landuse option that is only viable when it can take resources from the rest of the community without paying for it?
This is very interesting. Put aside for the moment the politics.
What is really going on is the bureaucrats are trying to figure out a way (however brutal) to assign a price value to a natural resource. Rain has no value assigned to it and so cannot be considered in any economic calculations as anything other than a freebie.
Assigning market value to things like rain, biodiversity, soil health is exactly what is needed if we are to expect our current economic system be able to “see” these environment values as anything worth consideration. It’s time to integrate the environment into the free market, rather than to always deal with every eco issue in a one off arbitrary fashion.
In theory, the price of the rain should be added on to the sale price of the timber produced and passed on down the line to manufacturers and ultimately to consumers who will, in turn, treat their wood-based products with increased respect and conservation.
For instance, the average Aussie farmer would probably think that Rain is the limiting factor on his property. In fact, east of Bourke it usually isn’t. Temperature is the limiting factor for plant growth, 32 c for most C3 grasses and wheat and therefore animal stocks too.
The Average Aussie farmer only uses 20% of the rain that falls on his land, 80% is lost. Less than 15% of rain in agriculture regions ends up in production.
Normally, 50% of average rainfall in a year is considered a drought, so the average farmer is creating his own mini-drought! Utilizing less than 50% of the water that falls on your land is usually detriment to the soil health, because the farmer makes up for the lack of water by over grazing or over farming and the salinity becomes mobile.
If farmers had to pay for the rain on their land and were free to pass the price on to the Coleswoolie duopoly, what do you want to bet we could get Rainfall Use Efficiency (RUE) up into the 80 percentile no time flat.
Australian farmers are the most labour efficient in the world. Wonder why?
The problem is that the rain tax will just go into the pocket of the government who will use it to grow fat and keep themselves in power.
Rain trading schemes anyone?
“A 2003 study said all types of reforestation in the Murray-Darling Basin would suck 600 billion litres of water from the system each year by 2020. The industry argues this overestimates the number of trees that will be planted, and its best guess is that, by 2028, plantations will take 50 billion litres from the basin.”
Which 2000 study, by whom? From which agency, industry or interest group? That’s a huge difference in estimates of ground water use.
Charging any primary industry (including forestry) for the rainfall it receives would make it uncompetitive on the world market. Australian primary industries cannot pass on costs – they have to trade at world prices. Start this caper for one section, and the money and jobs would be too tempting for pollies and bureacrats. It would spill over to all land in Australia. Now how about those water efficient suburban gardens? Isn’t it time the parks were charged for the water retained by their forests?
Come on Ian, the greens have always strongly advocated the benefits of plantation forestry on good farm land. In doing so they convinced the majority of Australian politicians to reserve large chunks of productive and well managed native forests. Now that the shift has been made the greens appear to be changing thier minds.
Let’s not forget their advocacy a decade ago:
Ms PUTT: The Greens, Tasmanian Parliament 2 March 2004
“…forestry can be all about truly ecologically sustainable forestry coming from a plantation base.”
What we would like to see private forestry doing is taking up the recommendations of the 1991 National Plantations Advisory Committee report. Those recommendations are very good and the report reflects some very good committee work that was done by numbers of people known to us here in Tasmania, including Sean Cadman on behalf of the Australian Conservation Foundation and Winsome McCaughey, who is very well respected around Australia, from Greening Australia. The core recommendations are that plantations should be established only on already cleared agricultural land and that private land-holders should be given financial incentives to do so.
We envisage that dairying and cropping farmers would also plant commercial tree crops on the better soils under their control and that if we were to place these initiatives within the department of Primary Industry, tree growing and research would be concentrated under the department and ensure that the information was in the hands of an agency with a motive and an interest in helping farmers prepared to grow crops, and that certainly has not been the case up until now.
Of course the shift to a plantation-based forest industry in Tasmania would also entail, in terms of the present institutional arrangements and the farmers who benefit from those, a shift from the major benefit going to a handful of midlands silvertails to, I guess, what are commonly called the dirt farmers of the north west and the dairy farmers who would be putting in place –
– I am saying that it is good to move plantation forestry into those areas and to give the dirt farmers, as they are popularly known, more crops, greater diversification and robustness through the establishment of those plantation resources.
Sorry the Parliamentary quote is from 1994!
I repeat, Mott, who owns the rain ?
Just answer the question, without appeals to nebulous, undefined “communities” or Rudderless-like, low level sarcasm [golly gee guess what you know something]
And when you do address the question, rather than one you just make up, then define sovereign risk
Then explain why 6 million homes shouldn’t be taxed for the rain on the lawns, trees, gardens, tanks, rooves. Collectively (you’ll love that word), this geographic area is larger than that of the plantations.
Helen,
There is an argument that primary industries should be primarily local. Australian timber already can’t compete in a global market dominated by the sort of pillaging going on Indonesia and Brazil and it won’t be able to compete later when those countries eventually migrate to plantation timber either. That’s why Gunn’s wants more pulp mills. But the primaries always have great local home ground advantages due to shipping and handling costs.
The export market is relatively small about 20% of all primary industry production and most of that is wool and wheat and the profit margins are very high for ag sector.
The future of the Australian economy should be in high value added markets based on creativity and emergent technologies and research and development, not the primary industries, which are more apart of the past than the future. God help us if Australia has to rely on the primary industries for GDP growth.
My main point remains. If we believe in our current economic system of free markets and if we wish to keep our primary industries sustainable, then we have to figure out a way to price “sustainability” or farmers will be pressured to borrow too deeply from the natural resources on their properties.
We Aussies can punch way above our weight. Why don’t we lead instead of follow?
Ianl,
Mate, you’re a genius. What a capital idea! Tax every property in Victoria, Bloody hell, why stop at state borders, the whole bloody country. Tax rain everywhere.
And allow share trading in a rainwater equities scheme. Bloody brilliant, mate. In a single stroke of insight you have solved the nation’s agua woes. It would have been too complex to manage in the pre-Internet era, but information management is our strength today.
You think that farm RUE (rain utilization efficiency) is low, just look at your average suburban block. RUE is usually less than 2%. Urban blocks = 0 %. What are all those storm water drains about? Pure waste.
We can’t build more dams because a new newt or some special interest has a QC. No one seems to want to drink recycled pee. We have to think outside the box on this.
If only rain had a price marker then suddenly it would become visible to our economic system. Problem solved.
Do I need to say more? Just ask.
Oh, and Ianl, only God (whatever that means to you) owns the rain.
Lets just subtract all the usual partisan ranting (and before Luke turns up with his busload of retarded alter egos);
we are told that;
+ steel and concrete have a high carbon footprint
+ timber is a renewable resource and has a low carbon footprint
+ non renewables are ecologically unsustainable, timber is renewable and ecologically unsustainable
+ timber industry is ecologically unsustainable
+ forestry in native woodlands is ecologically unsustainable
+ forestry in plantations is ecologically unsustainable
No wonder people get fed up with all this mumbo jumbo!
This is a pretty amazing story given that the Victorian Government has publicly stated that the Government is “opposed any taxes on rainwater”.
(Herald SunJanuary 14, 2007)
At the time they were taking aim at the Howard Federal Goverment that wanted to provide a new way of providing water security.
Now despite the earlier opposition, it looks like a political back flip that could only be made into a Olympic size swimming pool holding at least 2,500,000 litres of rain water.
I assume that the calculations would take account of the water that would have been used by the pasture or orchards that were the previous use of the land.
I have a strong suspicion that pasture and orchards use at least at least as much water as pines or eucalypts, which are drought adapted.
Presumably the Victorian government will be consistent in its principles. Dairy farmers and fruit growers watch out.
Hmmn, The issue is not the fact that plantations use rain but rather, that past clearing produces an increase in runoff and that rapidly growing trees produce a reduction in runoff.
Sure there are elements in government that would love to tax rain but in this case we have vast areas of tax subsidised plantations that are capturing the surplus produced by someone else up stream. The growth rates claimed by most plantation prospectus schemes are only possible where there is an aquifer that can be mined.
There are numerous examples where the claimed growth rates have only lasted until the aquifer was returned to normal, pre-clearing levels.
This is not to deny that many plantations were established with the express purpose of lowering water tables to combat salinity but here in Australia we have droughts that have performed that function for millenia. And yes, the people who planted the trees will have been betrayed if they are now taxed on the portion of surplus groundwater their trees use.
But that is the normal consequence of getting into bed with green and government spivs. The plantation sector was only too glad to portray their wood as being “green” at the expense of native forest wood that was supposedly not green, even “unsustainable”. They were only too eager to obtain a benefit at the expense of others by way of a highly deceptive message.
So guess what folks, you made your bed, you slept with the dogs, now you must put up with the fleas, and the parasites. The irony in all this is that the governments own incompetent fire management has now turned more than 2 million hectares of equilibrium yield native forest into a vast regrowth water sponge that is extracting an entire order of magnitude more water than the victorian plantation sector.
Meanwhile, I can restore a native regrowth forest onto any piece of cleared land I own and no-one has any moral right or authority to stop me. If they have any concerns about my trees using too much water then they need only advise me how much water the original forest used and I will be only too pleased to thin my trees so they only take that volume.
And as my trees will only be using that portion of the rain that the original forest used, they will have no legal grounds for taxing me for that rain.
But before I lift a finger I will expect the full bundle of property rights that were attached to my land to be restored, in writing, and backed up by legislative and constitutional reform.
Until then, folks, enjoy the partners you chose to associate with, and the environment you deserve, from the government you elected.
Well everyone got an upping this time. Shame on you foresters too. Not sure why yet. Coz you didn’t join Mottsa’s conga line you’re going have to be sorry.
Well I guess from the water management spivs’ viewpoint it’s all about water supply provision at cost. That involves money. So they can tax the green scum sucking urbanites some more or you can sock it to the lowest common denominator – forestry. What’s the least voter impact? Something about the way democracy works.
All these issues are inevitably about sharing – if the water-whinging driveway-hosing urbanites were Israelis and the water-nicking tree growers were the Syrians, well they’d probably bomb them into the Stone Age. Mottsa would enjoy that I’m sure coz he could then jihad us back forever. But I thought Aussies were a tad more civilised.
It’s the same issue revisited whether it’s sharing water, water quality, irrigation, or carbon sinks. Activities conducted upstream often affect activities downstream. Off-site impacts occur. Resources are finite. And majority urbanites out vote minority rural dwellers. Unthinking behaviour badly affects others – and both ways.
If there are too many people sucking on the same pipe – which there are – well you could devise some method of allocating the resource. But are you going to be happy with that? Of course not – someone will always be left ranting.
However – most of us live in communities and catchments. Is sharing too hard? Is cooperation impossible? Yes because we live with people who don’t want to negotiate.
BTW – I’m not in favour of retrospectively taxing plantation growers either. But let’s not let rationality or fairness enter in to a good blog rant.
I can see Ian really likes to do retrospective balance sheets. We can do a full audit back to European settlement – I reckon by the time you add up who’s had a go at what and who’s caused what problems – you might consider settling down.
Let’s see – 200 years costings for land degradation, weeds, ferals, altering the rainfall regime by land clearing, loss of biodiversity, destruction of fisheries, salinity, subsidisation of unviable irrigation schemes – then the subsidisation of agriculture by levies and tariffs, drought relief, landcare, NHT – could be a massive bill – maybe you even owe us a cheque?
But we green scumoid urbanites wouldn’t do that coz we’re community minded.
I can also see there were no bushfires in Victoria before the greens turned up. Bullsheeeet !
No problem, Creepy, but remember that most of the clearing was required as a condition of the grant of title. And converting from leasehold to freehold involved the purchase of all the trees from the state. And most of the weeds came from urban gardens. And all those expensive tractors built by urban tarrif bludgers. Not to mention all the baksheesh paid by exporters on the wharves. Puts your piddly little drought relief in its proper context.
And of course there is the bushfire stats from NSW that fell off the back of a truck. Equal areas of forest in State Forest, National Parks and Freehold but 10 times more fire damage in the State Forests and 100 times more in the parks.
Rationality or fairness? In the brave new green utopia? And pigs might fly.
Undoubtedly – let he who is without sin cast the first analysis.
But I am begrudging all of that?
I would think a civil society would see water in catchments are being something that needs to be shared. And off-site impacts of upstream (or up-catchment) users on downstream users such as water quality and salinity are object lessons in cooperative behaviour.
Sounds like the water managers haven’t communicated with the land managers about the impact off tree plantations on the water resource in this instance. It’s crept up on them as the ecohydrology science has come in and dam levels drop. Didn’t think about it. No planning or foresight.
So if you become PM with the new Property Rights party – how are you going to appeal to a wide range of voters to fairly and rationally allocate shared resources like water.
Would be good to get some of these debates away from whinging and towards something constructive. Especially using your unique perspective.
Civil societies do not start with deception and misinformation and finish off with demonisation.
As I have said on numerous posts, the only way to properly allocate catchment water reources is to first complete a full review of all present and past land use changes that impact on water yield so we can determine the full range of natural, pre-settlement seasonal flows. For this range in pre-settlement flows is the only basis for determining what the catchment managers duty of care actually is.
At the moment, the MDBC and all the other trogs are busy pretending that current gross flows have not been augmented by past land clearing. They do this for the rather transparent intention to overstate the significance of irrigation water extractions. They also do this so their mates in the public sector parks estate can avoid responsibility for the consequences of massive vegetation thickening taking place under their tenure.
All that is required is proper accounting for variations so a full and fair view of the issue can be fed into the decision making process. It is nothing more than the minimal expectation we all have for administration and governance. But for some reason the greens regard it with extreme reluctance. And one can only conclude that they are acting in bad faith.
Yep OK we can build on this. Help me out.
So if you’re suddenly CEO of the MDBC – what simulation runs are you going to ask the boffins to do?
Assuming MDBC boffins have a realistic not over parameterised model of the Murray Darling river and catchment system one could run a model of the water yields available for towns, irrigation, river forests, the Coorong etc from 1890 till now. Samples the floods and droughts, good and bad years.
There’s probably only enough data to run the model since 1890.
And you need to commission dams in the model at the construction dates.
Then one needs a model of land development (clearing) since 1890.
And a model of historic dryland cropping to remove water from upper catchment soils.
Then you could reset the land development back to forested and at some agreed level of woodland density. But you’d have to allocate some fire regime. All assuming you can simulate the eco-hydrological effects of trees.
You would then have a difference in water availability at specified river nodes.
So what are you doing to do with this information?
Oh yea – the email beeps and BoM tells you that the climate has changed – something about a guy called SAM – the future climate isn’t like the past.
For a start we would all know what the real natural flow was like and the real extent of the current variance from it. The state would also know the source and application of all current allocations and would be able to determine the true extent of any climate changes.
More importantly, they would be able to go to any landholder in the catchment and explain to them what the original water yield was from their land, and all the things they have done that have increased their runoff and all the things they have done that has decreased it.
They can then identify the givers and the takers and reconcile these back to all their allocation obligations, on the basis of all the relevant facts. This would leave no room for spin and political interference.
In short, they would get the true handle on their brief that they are required to do under their statutory obligations.
Then you’ll run into a condition of title argument and previous agreement from many many opposing directions.
Do you realise the size of the undertaking needed to backtrack all these calculations?
We’re now talking to every land holder in the MDB about their land history !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And even when you do all this you’ll be left with a scarce resource, an allocation balance issue and unsatisfied players.
And of course to be fair – all this clearing will have affected the climate – as you have mentioned before land use feedbacks are most important – albedo, surface roughness, stomatal resistance. So we know the basin temperatures have gone up. Circulation systems have moved (latest BoM work). Brighter albedo? Less wind. Replacement vegetation uses more water per unit LAI but root depths shallower?
Are you starting to appreciate this is a complex task to do properly.
You won’t like it but you’re getting close to wanting to simplify the model. Leave things out.
In greenhouse terms – why they started the accounting clock at 1990 !!
So Ian – we’ve heard the abuse – the rant about incompetent managers – you need to lay out the specific model runs and what aspects of the input data reality you need.
And where will this lead you – you probably will have generated some more runoff – but maybe not quite as much as you thought. But perhaps also maybe more. Who knows without a study.
So then you’ll have your precious knowledge on land use development.
Then you will still be left with a system that’s out of water and with too many users. What then will you do?
I’m not convinced in the slightest you have a clue what to do !
No, you would prefer to ‘negotiate’ in a climate of duress, in a context of ambiguity and political ambit claims with the only possible outcome being the continued shafting of an electoral minority.
You claim it is all too hard but you know damned well that the capacity and know how to do this properly has been around for more than two decades. And the fact that existing allocation obligations will arise is not an excuse for junking due process and sound governance principles.
I often wonder if it will ultimately take a few bureaucrats in a ditch covered in flies before they realise that you can’t go fundamentally altering people’s lives based on nothing more than voodoo and a fragmentary grasp of the brief.
Come on Ian – work us through the steps.
Stop complaining.
What simulations runs, what data sets are needed.
What will you do when you get the numbers.
How will you negotiate with stakeholders?
What will you do about existing agreements.
How are you going to get the best outcome – lay it out … I’m seriously interested.
Let’s roll.
What simulations and data sets? I think the current head of CSIRO Water, Rob Vertessy would have no trouble answering that question.
what to do when we get the numbers?
Map each portion of each river system in terms of its current percentage of pre-settlement flows so that the parts that are in excess can be identified and the parts that are in deficit can be too. At the moment we have clowns claiming that the entire MDB is in serious deficit when large parts of the upper catchments are actually in yield surplus. Past clearing has actually boosted flows in these parts of the system.
Note: I then went on to outline a detailed set of steps that would enable the transparent management of catchment flows on an equitable basis based on a true and fair view of actual circumstances. But on reflection, I deleted it all because in the current circumstances, the information would only serve to assist, and therefore prolong, a fundamentally corrupt and predatory regime.
The current policy process is so enmired in bull$hit and fraudulent conspiracy to dispossess both water users and water providers that any qualitative input will only be used to advance the objectives of the predators.
THE most important test of any commitment on the part of both government and administration to proper management of water resources is to ensure that the facts, alone, dominate the process. When that is the case there is little room left for ambit claims and predatory bull$hit.
And ONLY when the facts clearly dominate the process will there be sufficient demonstration of good faith to justify any input on my part that might assist the process. At the moment, only those facts that serve the objectives of those in control are uncovered. The rest are obscured. That needs to be fixed before there is anything else to say.
So back to whinging. This is complex issue if you want to do it properly. Much more than land use mapping – lots of non-linear interactions and feedbacks. Daunting eh!
So just falling back on “it’s a predatory regime” is pretty weak. CSIRO aren’t magicians – can they whip a quick land use HISTORY for the MDB? And what’s this – is this a dagger I see before me – CSIRO ! – they’d have to join up with the climate guys who you say are crooks.
You’ve clearly stated your issue – consideration of extra flows from land clearing. But this is a complex problem. What you would be satisfied with as an answer is not now known.
You can use the last 120 years of climate records as some sort of simulation test bed data set – there has not only been climate variation, but ongoing land use variation, and construction of dams. And industries and towns based on extractions. All needs to be factored in.
The issue of future climate is fundamental – some good science now that the climate regime is changed and changing http://www.mdbc.gov.au/__data/page/29/SEACImedia-release-May08.pdf . Surely you wouldn’t want a model based on 1950s rainfall that can’t deliver? But you’ve dismissed the nation’s climate scientists. What are you going to ask Vertessy to to fuel his models with.
This is just the same as Kyoto and 1990 start date issue. You want the clock started in 1788 without any idea of what it would take.
So you can make all these wonderful poor farmer arguments up Motty. “ooooo but we’ve added to the flows by land clearing” – well boo hoo – all the users and needs have now gobbled it all up. You have no idea really what it takes to solve these problems. Thanks for not playing.
Just as well we’re not working on the Nile River – we would have to simulate the world back the Pharaohs.
Fatuous crap. Most of the work has already been done for the salinity maps and you know it. The key fact is that the scumnoscenti is out claiming that natural flows have been severely depleted by irrigation extractions and need humungous amounts of water from farmers to restore some hideous “balance”.
The same scumnoscenti was claiming that past and present clearing was producing such drastically increased water yields that rising water tables were producing salinity armageddon.
You can’t have both. If clearing has increased water yield then the historical flows must have been much less than what is being claimed as being the level that needs restoration. Ergo, the variance between historical flows and current post irrigation flows is no-where near as significant as is being claimed.
So cut the crap, there is no ambiguity here. Those who wish to “allocate” water resources without the clarity of all the relevant facts have the sole intention of exploiting misinformation to gain the benefit of someone else’s water by deception.
You are either in the reality business or the bull$hit business, you can’t be in both. And if you are in the bull$hit business then the sooner it all blows up in your face, the better.
Drivel. Drivel and more drivel. What now – the salinity story you rejected. Nose is getting longer and longer now. It’s really apparent that you don’t know. So bitter. So angry. But when cornered to progress – you would rather complain. Pure politics. Noted very very well.
Angry about a politicised scientific community that allows resource allocation decisions to be made on the basis of representations they know to be false? You bet fella.
Angry about major lengths of the Murray River being described as being subject to major reductions in flow rates when the water delivered to Adelaide in 5 out of 6 years is well in excess of natural flows? You bet fella.
Angry about urban users who pocket huge capital gains on their tax free home but only lift a finger to supply their own water needs if it comes with a fat government handout? You bet fella.
Angry about green NGOs who want to take 1.5 million megalitres away from farmers for no other purpose than to flush out with fresh water, a big shallow lake that used to be a tidal estuary, flushed by tides every day? You bet fella.
Angry about dumb $hit eco-warriors who will use most of the stolen water volume to merely raise a fifth of it to the level needed to flood some high banks. When all they need is a pump and a low bund to do the same job at a fraction of the cost? You bet fella.
But bitter about it? Not in the slightest. There are certain standards one expects of people who seek my assistance. And you and your kind simply do not meet those standards.
Didn’t take long to get back up the soapbox. Well you’re going to be angry for a long time. And given your eminent qualifications in consultation, hydrology and aquatic ecology somehow I wouldn’t waiting by the phone. It’s a real problem when you know you’re right and everyone else is wrong isn’t it.