Stephen Miles says targets harder to reach as Climate Council, WWF and Wilderness Society predict ‘panic clearing’
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| The Climate Council, WWF and the Wilderness Society are expecting a new surge in clearing after the defeat of the Palaszczuk government’s bill that attempted to restore controls on deforestation. Photograph: Auscape/UIG via Getty Images |
A renewed surge in clearing is expected after Thursday’s defeat of the Palaszczuk government bill that attempted to restore controls on deforestation. The defeat has also dashed hopes of tackling the nation’s fastest-rising source of carbon pollution.
However, Josh Frydenberg, the federal environment minister, insisted Australia was “on track to meet and beat” the first hurdle of its Paris climate pact commitments, a 5% cut in emissions by 2020.
Frydenberg’s optimism contrasts with a study released in February showing emissions from clearing in Queensland, after the former Newman government axed controls in 2013, had already wiped gains made under the federal government’s emissions reductions fund.
The Climate Council, WWF and the Wilderness Society all predict further bouts of “panic clearing” by graziers before the Palaszczuk government’s bid to pass controls in its next term if re-elected.
And a growing rate of remnant vegetation clearing is expected to drive a rise in carbon emissions, they say, further eroding progress towards targets pledged by the federal government in Paris last December.
The legislative defeat has also set the Palaszczuk government on a renewed course of lobbying Unesco not to revisit its decision to keep the Great Barrier Reef on its world heritage list, which was made in part because of assurances that runoff from clearing would be curtailed.
The ERF – the centrepiece of the federal government’s bid to cut emissions by 5% by 2020 and by 26-28% by 2030 – has invested mostly in buying back clearing permits from farmers.
Previous clearing laws in Queensland were instrumental to the former Howard government meeting carbon cut targets under the Kyoto protocol.
But their axing has led to a doubling in clearing rates to almost 300,000 hectares a year, suggesting the creation of 108m tonnes of carbon over the last three years, including 35.8m tonnes in 2014-15.
The ERF to date has allocated $1.7b to purchase 143m tonnes of carbon, 98m tonnes of which relates to “vegetation projects” – mostly buybacks of clearing permits from landholders.
Steven Miles, the Queensland environment minister, said unabated clearing in the state made national climate change targets “that much harder” with deeper cuts required in other sectors.
“Given it more than wipes out the ERF, it leaves the commonwealth without a tool to achieve their targets,” he told Guardian Australia.
“If you assume that billions of dollars of ERF money just get wiped out from land clearing, how are you achieving the cuts that they need and they’ve committed to across the economy?
“When you’re clearing at this rate, you’re behind the eight ball when you start doing the economic transition [to a low-carbon economy].
Drone footage shows significant land clearing in Queensland
“It’s running in the wrong direction. When your last resort for emissions that you can’t minimise is to offset them primarily by planting trees, they cut against each other, don’t they?”
However, Frydenberg said the ERF was “working effectively to achieve low-cost abatement”.
“Australia remains on track to meet and beat its 2020 emissions reduction target,” he said. “The latest estimate by the Department of Environment shows we are on track to exceed the target by 78m tonnes.”
Lyndon Schneiders, the national director of the Wilderness Society, said emissions from clearing in Queensland would now worsen and further eclipse ERF gains.
“I just think every bulldozer in Queensland will be out knocking down bush at accelerated rates because that’s what happens,” he said. “The only thing that’s keeping that 5% target [by 2020] even in the show has been that the economy’s tanked.
“The only place where emissions have been going through the roof is around land clearing.
“I’m sure the national government does not want to just throw $2b down the toilet in buying back emissions but they seem to be almost powerless to do anything about what’s happening at the state level.”
Martin Taylor, a scientist for WWF, said there had already been “massive amounts of panic clearing” in the lead up to the state government’s ill-fated push for controls.
Tayor said WWF researchers using satellite data had identified “two huge episodes” of 5,000 hectares and almost 7,000 hectares of remnant forest in central Queensland cleared since the last state land and tree cover survey.
“They’re running bulldozers through, tearing down everything except leaving a few sticks behind and calling it ‘thinning’,” Taylor said. “We’re discovering now that that is the main way that the Newman government axed the ban on broadscale clearing.”
This was separate to high-value agriculture permits issued by the former LNP government, some of which have since been frozen by the commonwealth for assessment under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.
Commonwealth intervention under those laws has been applauded as a hopeful sign by conservation groups but criticised by Queensland Coalition senators such as Ian MacDonald.
Miles said the commonwealth intervention could help arrest the rate of some inappropriate large-scale clearing. But their scope for cracking down was limited to piecemeal individual cases under the EPBC laws and did not relate to their implications for emissions.
“Short of them legislating their own tree-clearing laws, like federal Labor said they’re going to do if elected, it really comes down to Queensland,” Miles said.
Comment was sought from Frydenberg’s office.
The Climate Council’s chief executive, Tim Flannery, said the failure of land-clearing legislation to pass in Queensland was “going to have a big impact” on Australia’s efforts to meet its Paris targets.
“We may yet see a spike in land clearing following this,” Flannery said. “Whenever farmers feel something is going to change in the future, they clear like crazy before what they see as the axe falling.
“It’s such a pity because Queensland is just such a biodiverse place and the sort of stuff that’s being cleared, often these bottle tree scrubs and dry rainforest communities, are particularly significant.”
Flannery separately called for the federal government to “hammer down on the use of fossil fuels” and stop using “biological carbon” emissions as a “smokescreen for a lack of performance” in cutting transport and energy sector emissions.
The tree-clearing study by environmental services company CO2 Australia also suggested the federal government’s bid to meet climate change targets could be undermined by its under-recording of emissions from clearing.
A federal government report last December 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.
But Queensland government data also released last year suggested a rate that would take national land clearings emissions to 55m tonnes a year between 2020 and 2030.
Clearing would then emit an extra 118m tonnes of carbon next decade, a blowout of more than 10% on reductions pledged by the commonwealth in Paris.
Links
- Donations to restore Great Barrier Reef could dry up if land clearing continues, says donor
- Exclusive: land-clearing surge in Queensland set to wipe out Direct Action gains – report
- Scientists write open letter in support of Queensland tree-clearing reforms
- Queensland land-clearing reforms could hinge on speaker's vote
- Deforestation surges in Queensland ahead of crackdown on land clearing
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