What natural ecosystems do best is store carbon—as well as looking after wildlife and watersheds and simply being beautiful.  Protecting and enhancing biodiversity is a critical part of responding to the climate crisis because there simply is not enough land or water or time to replace carbon lost through clearing or native forest logging.  In Australia, native forest clearing and logging are 20% of the emissions problem and need a proportionate amount of resources, money and policy attention.

Forests adjacent to Ben Lomond National Park - storing carbon but zoned for logging.  Photos Rob Blakers

Working paper 4.  Australia’s national greenhouse accounts re-arranged for policy relevance
March 2009

This paper aims to present Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts in a way that facilitates policy debate by making them easier to understand and more transparent in relation to non-fossil fuel emissions.  This updated paper (April 2009) includes a new table highlighting how industry sectors relate to the greenhouse accounting sectors used by the UNFCCC.  ‘Agriculture’ in the greenhouse accounts is essentially animal husbandry; it does not include land clearing or management.  Similarly ‘forestry’ in the Kyoto greenhouse accounts (and the government’s CPRS) only covers plantations grown since 1990 on previously cleared land; it does not include native forest logging (or older plantations).
Australian_greenhouse_accounts_re-arranged_April_2009.pdf

A framework for carbon accounting and emissions reductions

Carbon accounting, like financial accounting, should present the information needed for policy and action in a clear comprehensible fashion.  Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts are difficult to interpret and understand.  This framework rearranges the accounts, separating fossil carbon from biocarbon, emissions from uptake, and green carbon (in natural systems) from production carbon (in agricultural systems, including plantations).
2008_0923_Emissions_framework.pdf

Biocarbon, biodiversity and climate change.  A REDD Plus scheme for Australia

Living systems store carbon ("biocarbon").  Unlike fossil carbon, these stores occupy the earth’s surface and they accumulate over time.  The quantities of carbon stored are massive in total and can reach extraordinary densities in intact ecosystems.  Biocarbon is lost to the atmosphere through clearing, logging, burning, soil disturbance and other forms of degradation.  It is recaptured in growing vegetation but for forests this may take decades or centuries.  Existing dense carbon stores in mature natural ecosystems are irreplaceable in any relevant time scale, except by competing with agriculture for scarce water and land areas large enough to replant in compensation.

Internationally, negotiations are in train to reduce deforestation and degradation in tropical rainforests (REDD). Australia’s needs its own REDD Plus scheme, focusing primarily on existing natural ecosystems.  The first step is to reduce and eliminate emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD); the second step is to secure permanent protection, ecologically and legally, with properly funded management (Plus).
Working Paper 3.  Biocarbon,_biodiversity_and_climate_WP3_v.1.pdf

Gunns pulpmill:  mega greenhouse gas polluter

Gunns proposed pulpmill will result in annual greenhouse gas emissions of at least 10.2 Mt CO2 per annum, equivalent to 2% of Australia’s total emissions in 2005.  If native forest wood is used, the total emissions will be higher.  Read more:  Gunns_pulpmill_-_greenhouse_emissions.pdf

Working paper 2:  Forests, vital for climate protection

Native forest have a vital role in Australia’s greenhouse gas profile, as a very large store of CO2 and as a source of greenhouse gas emissions, primarily resulting from logging.  This paper estimates that logging produces emissions of 38 Mt CO2 per annum, equivalent to 7% of Australia’s total emissions.  Depending on the age of the forest, it will take up to several centuries to recapture all of the CO2 emitted. 
Read more:  Forests_-_vital_for_climate_protection.pdf

Working paper 1:  Australia’s national greenhouse accounts

This working paper was written to gain a better understanding of how Australia’s greenhouse gas accounts are put together, focusing on land use, land-use change and forestry.  It outlines and comments on the methodologies used by the Australian Greenhouse Office. 
Read more: Australia,_national_greenhouse_accounts.pdf