19 August 2013

More deforestation following ETS changes

The Government is cherry-picking figures and trying to ignore that their own reports show increases in deforestation following their weakening of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), the Green Party said today.

This month the Environmental Protection Agency released figures that show an increase in credits required to be submitted under the ETS for deforestation of pre-1990 forests. They increased from 231,000 to 8,169,000 tonnes of CO2e, over 3400%, between this year’s and last year’s reports.

“The latest Environment Protection Agency report on the ETS shows a massive increase in credits submitted to deforest pre-1990 forests,” said Green Party climate spokesperson Dr Kennedy Graham.

“The Ministry for Primary Industries’ most recent annual deforestation survey shows that more forests are expected to be cut down than would happen without the Government’s ETS in place.

“Minister Groser needs to face up to the fact that, since his Government took an axe to the ETS, our emissions have gone up and the latest figures show we are headed for even more deforestation.

“New Zealand relies on a stable climate. We can’t expect others to take action if we continue to freeload,” said Dr Graham.

This years, and last year’s Environment Protection Agency ETS reports. Relevant figures in top row of table five in both reports:
Page 13 of: http://www.epa.govt.nz/Publications/2012-13_Section_89_Report.pdf
Page 11 of: http://www.epa.govt.nz/Publications/Section_89_CE_Reporting2012.pdf

MPI deforestation survey report:
http://mpi.govt.nz/news-resources/publications?title=Deforestation%20Survey

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