Extract from The Guardian
In just three years the
rate of land clearing will create enough additional carbon dioxide
emissions to cancel out emissions savings the government says it will
make by paying farmers $670m to stop cutting down trees.
Lenore
Taylor Political editor
Monday 29 February 2016 00.01 AEDT
A land-clearing surge in Queensland is set to
create additional carbon dioxide emissions in just three years that
are equivalent to those the federal government claims it is avoiding
by paying other farmers over $670m to stop cutting down trees,
according to a new analysis.
The Queensland land clearing along with weakening
land clearing laws in several other states are threatening
Australia’s chances of meeting the climate change targets it
pledged in Paris last year and raising questions about the
coalition’s “Direct Action” climate policy.
A new study of Australian tree-clearing by
environmental services company CO2 Australia – obtained by Guardian
Australia – has quantified the recent blow-out in greenhouse
emissions from the weakened laws, after a decade in which declining
tree clearing played a key role in Australia meeting its climate
change commitments.
The Queensland Labor government wants to repeal
laws passed by Campbell Newman’s government that led to the sudden
rise in tree clearing, but may not succeed in doing so and is facing
fierce resistance from the Liberal National party and others.
Land clearing in Queensland, along with weakening
land clearing laws in several other states, is threatening
Australia’s chances of meeting the climate change targets it
pledged in Paris last year.
Tentative moves by federal environment minister
Greg Hunt’s department to assess whether the clearing contravenes
federal laws have also prompted a backlash - particularly from his
own National party colleagues.
But the CO2 study, commissioned by the Wilderness
Society, shows the turnaround in clearing threatens to wipe out
emission reductions bought by the Turnbull Government’s Direct
Action scheme and jeopardise Australia’s chances of meeting its
promise to reduce greenhouse emissions by 26-28% by 2030.
The study quantifies the impact on emissions of
the discrepancy between the federal government’s data on Queensland
land clearing and state government data, as well as the absence of
accurate national data to predict land clearing emissions as NSW and
Western Australia also move to relax their rules.
Part of the blow-out in emissions from land use
and tree clearing was quietly acknowledged in the federal
government’s latest report on Australia’s greenhouse emissions,
released a few days before Christmas, which projected that emissions
from land clearing would rise 24% from 2013 levels, from an average
37m tonnes to an average 46m tonnes a year up to 2020 and 44m tonnes
a year between 2020 and 2030.
In 2013-14, 300,000 hectares were cleared in
Queensland alone, double the rate in 2011-12. Between 2012 and 2015
land clearing emissions in Australia rose 11 times faster than any
other sector.
Between 2012 and 2015 land clearing emissions in
Australia rose 11 times faster than any other sector.
But Queensland government data also released last
year revealed a far higher rate of clearing than the federal data
would suggests, a rate that would take national land clearings
emissions to 55m tonnes a year between 2020 and 2030.
At that rate land clearing would emit an
additional 118m tonnes of carbon dioxide over that decade – on top
of the higher rates the federal government is already factoring in –
a blow out of over 10% on the reductions the government pledged to
make by 2030 in the agreement forged last December in Paris.
Queensland government data shows a far higher rate of land clearing
than federal data suggests.
Professor Stuart Phinn, director of the remote
sensing research centre at the University of Queensland, said
Queensland’s approach was “world’s best practice.”
“The Queensland approach is based on a long time
series of satellite imagery, tied to field measurements of the amount
of vegetation on the ground,” he said. “It’s been developed
over 15 years.”
Both studies use Landsat satellite imagery, but in
Queensland field officers drive out to check that changes in the
satellite images are being correctly interpreted.
The federal government insists its national data
collection system has been ticked off as compatible with the United
Nations climate change accounting process.
Hunt’s office has been contacted for comment.
But Lyndon Schneiders, national campaigns director
of the Wilderness Society, says the new data shows Australia is
“lying to the world and lying to ourselves” about the true state
of greenhouse emissions.
“Land clearing across the country has spiralled
out of control in the last three years ... at exactly the same time
as the national government is spending up to $2.7bn, in large part by
trying to reduce land clearing,” he said.
“... the state governments, particularly in
Queensland and also in NSW, are handing out tree clearing permits
like confetti.
“The whole system is in disrepair. We are making
commitments a nation ... yet we are relying on data that is
completely different to the data that is being generated out of the
states, so we are lying to the international community and we are
lying to ourselves.”
The CO2 report confirms that at the same time land
clearing laws are also being weakened around the country and in many
states, there is patchy data to quantify the increase in tree
clearing or its impact on greenhouse emissions. It says there is no
connection between what the states are doing with vegetation
management laws and what the federal government is promising to
achieve in reducing greenhouse emissions.
“There is a conflict between the emission
reduction objectives of the Australian government ... and the recent
trend for state and territory regulatory reform that has, in a number
of cases, reduced barriers to vegetation clearing,” the CO2 report
says.
“There currently appears to be little incentive
for state and territory governments to seriously consider the
greenhouse gas implications associated with vegetation management ...
reform.”
In
New South Wales, the Baird government is scrapping the Native
Vegetation Act, which prevents the broad-scale clearing of native
vegetation. Conservation groups have walked out of talks on
replacement legislation because it offers what they consider to be
unacceptably weak protections.
In 2013, the Western Australian native vegetation
regulations were relaxed to allow up to five hectares of clearing at
a time, without a permit, and the re-clearing of regrowing forests up
to 20 years old.
The Queensland government, concerned about the
land clearing rates, also requested that Hunt’s department write to
some landholders with land clearing permits asking for information
about possible breaches of the federal Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation Act, but those letters prompted a fierce
backlash from agricultural groups and from National Party senator
Barry O’Sullivan who
attacked the “green activist inclinations” of the federal
department.
In late December, the federal environment
department wrote to the landholders saying it was “concerned”
that some of the clearing could have an impact on one of the “matters
of national environmental significance” the EPBC act is designed to
protect. These include nationally-listed threatened species,
migratory species, and the Great Barrier Reef marine park, but not
greenhouse emissions.
The federal department then sent another letter to
the landholders three weeks ago expressing “deep regret” if the
previous letter had caused them distress.
“We are keen to ensure, at the minister’s
direct request, that all assistance is provided to ensure you are
able to continue your business as soon as possible, in accordance
with the law,” the February 5 letter states.
Up until 2013 land clearing rates in Australia
were declining and that was the primary reason Australia had been
able to meet climate change goals.
Australia “overshot” the greenhouse gas
reductions it promised under the Kyoto Protocol largely because of
land clearing restrictions in Queensland that had already been agreed
at the time. This allowed Australia to “carry over” 128m tonnes
of emissions reductions into the second stage of the international
process, which ends in 2020, and meant we could easily meet the
target we had promised for that date. Five other big developed
countries announced
in Paris that they had voluntarily cancelled emission reduction
“credits” achieved by overshooting their first Kyoto protocol
greenhouse targets, but Australia refused to follow suit.
Over its first two auctions the emissions
reduction fund has paid around $670m to buy 51m tonnes of land sector
greenhouse gas abatement, according to the Clean Energy Regulator.
Much of that - but not all of it - was avoided tree clearing. The
blow-out in land clearing emissions contained in the national
figures, but using the Queensland government figures for that state,
adds 18m tonnes of emissions each year, undoing the ERF-purchased
land sector emissions reductions in just three years.
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