New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread
New Zealand falls out of love with sheep farming as lucrative pine forests spread
Sheep numbers in sharp decline as farmers increasingly shift to forestry, fuelled by demand to earn carbon credits
Sheep numbers in sharp decline as farmers increasingly shift to forestry, fuelled by demand to earn carbon credits
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Hope that lessons are learned from the experience of the East Coast. Forests are fine until they’re harvested, and then your hillsides crumble in rain and your roads with them, and your beaches are covered with slash…
The really perverse thing is there's no intention to ever harvest it. If they did that they'd have to pay back the carbon credits. They plant it and leave it, gather carbon credits quickly for 40 years. The rate slows down to a trickle after that as the canopy is mature. There is really no plan after that. Source family in forestry.
Doesn't the harvested timber lock up carbon though?
Yes if its buried or made into heirloom furniture. Much ends up as paper, boxing and framing for concrete construction and burnt. Very little truly locks it away long term, so the rules are that you count it as emissions at harvest time. If someone buys that and provably buries it at the bottom of a cave forever, they can claim the carbon credits again.
Anything that goes into the framing of a building would be pretty permanent, at least on a human time scale.