\n<\/p>\n
The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging \u201cat a minimum\u201d in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further in its advice and recommend an end to all native forest logging.<\/p>\n
The authority\u2019s report, released last week, said ceasing old growth logging and halving re-clearing rates would be one of the steps required to meet even the lower end of a goal to cut emissions by 62% to 70% by 2035.<\/p>\n
The report found that ending old growth logging, reducing other types of native forest harvesting and planting new forests \u201cwhere it makes sense\u201d could deliver about 6% of the necessary emissions reductions.<\/p>\n
Last Friday, a day after the government announced it had accepted that target range, the environment minister, Murray Watt, told ABC radio in Tasmania \u2013 where logging of old growth forest continues \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s not the government\u2019s intention to stop old growth logging altogether\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Greens forests spokesperson, the Tasmanian senator Nick McKim, said the authority\u2019s advice was clear that \u201ceven Labor\u2019s bottom-of-the-range target of 62%\u201d could not be met unless old growth logging, at a minimum, ceased.<\/p>\n
\u201cLabor needs to announce a date to end old growth logging, and if they\u2019re not going to do that they need to explain where they are going to find the emissions reduction to make up the shortfall,\u201d McKim said.<\/p>\n
Some states, such as NSW, already have restrictions on logging identified and mapped old growth forest, which is forest that has either not been logged or cleared previously or where evidence of past disturbance is negligible. But logging of other high conservation value native forest continues.<\/p>\n
The Greens position is that all native forest logging should end and it has called on the government to use forthcoming reforms to Australia\u2019s environment laws to ban the practice.<\/p>\n
McKim said ending native logging and reining in land-clearing would be one of the cheapest, fastest and most effective ways the government could cut emissions and protect biodiversity.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could end native forest logging literally in months and it would have a massive emissions benefit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would actually save taxpayers money because it\u2019s a heavily subsidised industry and what you\u2019ve got to do is just transition communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKim pointed to some states where this was already happening, such as NSW, where the Minns government has announced a major economic transition package for workers and communities affected by a moratorium on logging within its planned great koala national park.<\/p>\n
In a letter to the CCA\u2019s chair, Matt Kean, this week, Lindenmayer wrote \u201cthe key issue here is the end [of] all native forest logging\u201d. He wrote that scientific analysis showed \u201cproperly protecting native forests in Australia would make a highly significant contribution to the nation meeting its GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions reduction targets\u201d.<\/p>\n
In Tasmania alone, Lindenmayer wrote that native forest logging caused the equivalent of 1.1m cars worth of emissions every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s blindingly obvious that we have to stop native forest logging altogether and it\u2019s one of the most powerful short-term emissions reduction steps we can take,\u201d he told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n
Sign up to Clear Air Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cThere is also a massive economic benefit that would come from stopping native forest logging because the public wouldn\u2019t have to support the massive subsidies that prop up the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n A government spokesperson said McKim was \u201cmisinterpreting the CCA\u2019s role\u201d, which they said was to recommend a target to government, \u201cnot on plans to get there\u201d.<\/p>\n They pointed back to remarks by the climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, to the ABC\u2019s Insiders last Sunday, stating \u201cthere was one piece of advice the Climate Change Authority gave us\u201d: the target of 62% to 70%.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the only recommendation before us, and we obviously decided to accept it,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p>\n \u201cSo everything else the Climate Change Authority said doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it\u2019s your plan?\u201d the host, David Speers, asked.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything else \u2013 no. What they then did is in their report to me, quite rightly, is ran through some of the possibilities as to what achieving that might look like,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p>\n In response to Lindenmayer\u2019s concerns, the government spokesperson said the agriculture and land sector plan, one of six sector plans on Australia\u2019s transition to net zero by 2050, \u201coutlines support for a diverse landscape \u2013 balancing competing demands between carbon storage, nature repair and agriculture\u201d.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Climate Change Authority said its analysis found \u201cone way to achieve the 62% to 70% target involves ceasing clearing of old growth forests, halving re-clearing rates, and reducing native forest harvesting\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is part of the Authority\u2019s illustrative pathway for achieving the 62-70% target. There are other ways to achieve the same target, provided the equivalent level of abatement is made up across the economy,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Albanese government is being urged to end old growth logging \u201cat a minimum\u201d in order to meet a 2035 emissions reduction target recommended by the Climate Change Authority. Australia\u2019s most respected forest scientists, Prof David Lindenmayer, of the Australian National University, has also written to the authority questioning why it did not go further<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[191,105,1721,864,14655,12031,4672,1435,2651,3394,12442,1741],"class_list":{"0":"post-24060","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-emissions","9":"tag-expert","10":"tag-forest","11":"tag-labor","12":"tag-labors","13":"tag-logging","14":"tag-native","15":"tag-order","16":"tag-party","17":"tag-reach","18":"tag-reduction","19":"tag-target"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}