Ending native forest logging in Tasmania and valuing the state’s centuries-old trees as carbon storage could save the state at least $72m, according to a report by a pro-market thinktank.
The analysis by the Blueprint Institute, to be launched on Wednesday, recommends the state government immediately stop subsidising its forestry arm, Sustainable Timber Tasmania, and announce logging will end in mid-2025.
The institute said the Tasmanian government and opposition should work with the federal government to introduce a “robust carbon methodology” that allowed the state to generate carbon credits by stopping logging and introducing conservation measures.
It estimated CO2 sequestration in Tasmania’s forests could be worth $345m and provide a net benefit to the state of $72m after the cost of a transitional package for the timber industry was factored in.
The institute’s chief executive, David Cross, said the economic potential of using native forests for carbon sequestration and tourism far exceeded the value of logging.
“The taxpayer should not be subsidising environmental degradation to indulge the anti-competitive, protectionist fantasies of a small number of individuals with outdated and romanticised views of an industry,” he said.
The report is likely to be contentious with both the forestry industry, which is backed by the Liberal and Labor parties, and with local conservationists, who argue logging should be stopped on environmental and economic grounds, and the decision should not depend on carbon credit revenue.
Both groups are represented among 120 delegates at a three-day forestry economics congress organised by the Museum of Old and New Art to address the question: what is the value of Tasmania’s forests?
Academics continue to challenge the integrity of Australia’s carbon credit scheme. More broadly, critics of nature-based carbon credits say they are used to justify emissions from fossil fuel operations, not reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
Tasmanian environment organisations say the state should follow Victoria and Western Australia in phasing out native logging next year without allowing forests to be used to offset ongoing pollution. The Australia Institute has launched a campaign arguing “turning Australia’s forests into carbon offsets for the fossil fuel industry will only mean more pollution and more climate change”.
The Blueprint Institute’s report relies in part on modelling by Australian National University environmental law professor Andrew Macintosh, a damning critic of how the domestic carbon credit system has been managed, but a supporter of using markets to help protect and restore nature.
The institute said the assumptions it used deliberately overstated the costs and minimised the benefits of stopping native forest logging. When it took a less conservative approach it found the net benefit of ending the practice could be as much as $936m.
It recommended the state meet future timber demands by expanding plantations, and introduce incentives to boost private investment in tree farms.
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It was sharply critical of Sustainable Timber Tasmania’s “unusual and declining transparency” compared with other state forestry agencies, and said it was likely to be deterring private investment in plantations.
The Tasmanian forestry minister, Felix Ellis, said he had not seen the report, but he was not surprised Blueprint had recommended an end to native forestry as it had made similar recommendations in Victoria and New South Wales. He said the “reality is that plantation timber alone is not sufficient to meet Australia’s timber needs”.
“Ending sustainable native forestry will not reduce our nation’s timber needs. It will almost certainly lead to increased timber imports from jurisdictions with weaker environmental protections than our own,” Ellis said.
A Labor Environment Action Network report this year said 88% of timber produced in Australia came from plantations and just 12% from native forests. It cited government data showing few tree farms have been planted since 2010 and the total plantation area was falling.
The Mona forestry congress has been convened by artist and curator Kirsha Kaechele, the wife of museum owner David Walsh, who said she became interested in economics when she bought a house in New Orleans and discovered a 100-year-old oak tree in the back yard. She said she realised the tree hadn’t been factored into the selling price and decided “valuing nature seems a topic worth investigating”.
A report by the Australia Institute to be released at the congress said forestry accounted for just 1% of Tasmania’s jobs and its economic importance to the state had been overstated. It said 97% of forestry on privately owned land was already in plantation timber.
The Australia Institute’s Tasmanian forests spokesperson, Vanessa Bleyer, said the report showed the “long-held myth that we need native forest logging for the survival of regional towns in Tasmania” was a fallacy given many places had already economically diversified.