Please rule out retailing bioenergy derived from Australia’s native forests

Open letter.

Dear prospective retailer of bioenergy derived from Australia’s native forests,

As the world responds to climate change and seeks clean energy sources, proposals to use Australian native forest biomass to produce electricity or biofuels threaten our surviving forest heritage and actually exacerbate climate change.

Such proposals rely upon continuing industrial logging of our outstanding forests, which degrades their values by damaging biodiversity, terrestrial carbon stocks, clean air and water.

Logging to supply the export woodchip trade has attracted much controversy. Biomass for bioenergy will be the same. It will use exactly the same forest material as does native forest woodchipping, in massive volumes. The claim that this is ‘waste’ when in reality it constitutes 85% of wood coming out of the forests is nonsensical greenwash.

Using native forests for electricity or biofuels is not carbon neutral. A growing body of scientific evidence shows that it creates a large carbon debt, whereas ceasing to log reduces large emissions immediately.

Public native forests should be permanently protected for climate, water, wildlife, and the enjoyment of ordinary people.

Given the fraught and continually changing political environment surrounding both forest and climate policy in Australia, bioenergy is a risky investment and is heavily reliant on government grants, subsidies and tax breaks.

Genuinely clean, renewable energy sources may be displaced or undermined by native forest based bioenergy, but wind, solar and geothermal projects are the ones that we desire to be supported.

Please rule out retailing native forest derived bioenergy. Australians have already been indicating for years that they will not accept it. I will refuse to buy it because I want to buy real clean energy.

I look forward to your support for genuine clean and renewable energy sources.

For more information please visit www.biomassacre.com

Yours sincerely,

Peter Campbell

Online petition

• Tell electricity and fuel companies that you will refuse to buy native forest derived bioenergy! Say NO to a biomassacre

Its time to stop logging natural forests

Much of the world's natural forests have been lost due to clearing for agriculture - or just for their logs.  Natural forests are ecosystems that harbour plant and animal biodiversity, capture and sequester carbon dioxide and produce clean water.

Unfortunately, we are still destroying the world's remaining natural forests around the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Thailand, Papua New Guinea to name a few countries.

Yalmy Forest, East Gippsland. Author: Peter Campbell Source.

The "logging industry" is a misnomer now, as most of the "product" created from destroying natural forests is woodchips that are used to make cardboard and paper products.

Plantations and fibre crops such as hemp can supply the world's needs for pulp and timber.

However, voracious logging companies are still allowed by governments to keep logging and destroying native forest.   They are often given free access to the forests as a "resource" or they pay a token amount in "royalties".

Sometimes the logging is even subsided by taxpayers, as is the case with VicForests in Victoria, Australia and Forestry Tasmania in Tasmania, Australia.  In these cases the state governments of Victoria and Tasmania actually own logging companies.

Independent polls indicate that the majority of people now want their remaining native forest protected.  However, industry and governments collude to allow logging of natural forests to proceed.  Some conservation groups such as the Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund (all NGOs) still support ongoing logging of natural forests under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.

There is no way a natural forest can be logged without degrading it, and often this degradation is catastrophic to the forest.  Trees are felled, undergrowth is trampled by machinery, and the residue is burnt to "create a seedbed" for more trees to grow.  Biodiversity and the natural forest's ecosystem is degraded.  If this is repeated as a cycle, the forests are effectively converted in plantations.

It is time for logging of the world's remaining natural forests to cease.  They must be protected, not logged.

We have the power to make this happen.  Contact your local government and state and federal members of parliament and ask them to protect our remaining natural forests now.  Tell your friends to contact them too.

This post is written as a contribution to the 2012 Blog Action Day on the "power of we".

Agreement to exit native forest logging in Tasmania

An historic deal that will end logging of Tasmania's native forests was reported today.

Following lengthy talks between industry, union and environment groups, an agreement between them has just been struck, and a joint statement of principles issued, that includes:

• Recognising the need to protect high conservation value forests and end ''industrial forestry'' of them in a timeframe to be agreed
• Restricting the burning of timber as biomass fuel to material sourced from plantations only
• Moving to ''a strong and sustainable industry based on a range of plantation-based industries including a pulp mill"
• The logging of some specialty timbers from these forests for purposes such as craftwood is allowed.

This is great news for Tasmania's remaining native forests, and potentially ends decades of conflict over the logging of native forests.

It is interesting to note that no politicians were involved in brokering the agreement.  Forests have been a "political football" for some time, with both Labor and Liberal governments supporting their ongoing destruction for decades and ignoring the wishes of over 80% of the Australian population that want them protected.

There are many factors that have contributed to this outcome, including:

• Continued job losses within the native forest logging industry, despite ongoing access to native forests
• Gunns Corporation exiting native forest logging due to the unwillingness of Japanese buyers to purchase woodchips that are not subject to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified forestry practices
• The rising strength of the Australian dollar making export of woodchips unprofitable.
• Declining availability of native forests has forced governments to move loggers into highly contentious forest areas, which has provoked serious ongoing conflicts.
• A realisation that plantations can provide a much more reliable supply of wood with greatly reduced environmental impact - but only if they are appropriately managed.
• There is enough hardwood and softwood plantation resource currently available to enable industry transition out of native forests.

This follows the end of industrial-scale native forest logging in Queensland and Western Australia in the late 90s.  

This agreement clearly sets a precedent for exiting native forest logging in Victoria and New South Wales too, where factors very similar to those in Tasmania are also relevant.

It is to be hoped that industry, union and environment groups in New South Wales and Victoria can achieve a similar excellent outcome after years of similar conflict and declining jobs in the native forest logging sector. 

Forest protection is big issue in the upcoming 2010 Victorian State election.  The Brumby government protected around 41,000 hectares of forest in September 2010, but this included many areas that were not high conservation-value forests (only around 11,000 hectare were old growth forests), and left many other high quality forest areas such as Brown Mountain unprotected from logging.

A compromised political outcome that only protects Melbourne's water catchments (less than 2% of Victoria's native forests logged annually) - will not be good enough.

Links

• Era of protest ends in a principled peace, Sydney Morning Herald
• Historic deal on forests, The Age
• Forest Letter Watch
• Historic agreement to protect Tasmania's ancient forests, The Wilderness Society

Logging our native forests is just not on

The recent high score awarded to the logging industry by the EPA for complying with environmental requirements (Age, Business 4/6) unfortunately doesn't take into account the huge impact that logging and burning native forests has on biodiversity, the survival of endangered species such as Leadbeaters Possum, or the resulting loss of water from our catchments.

Reporting high compliance levels with the weak and substandard Code of Forest Practice is hardly a commendable outcome. I have witnessed at first hand numerous breaches of the Code, and the rampant forest destruction that results even when the Code is adhered to. For example, most habitat trees left recently logged Yalmy forests in East Gippsland have now died.

The Government is wasting a lot of taxpayers money doing questionable audits on an industry now almost exclusively focussed on producing low-value woodchips that are nearly all exported. The audits don't include the huge carbon emissions that result when the logged forests are burnt. These native forests should be protected both to address climate change, and to ensure they can be enjoyed by future generations. Treating them like de facto plantations is just not on.

Links
Logging audit gets high score