Catastrophic deforestation data demands comprehensive response
The catastrophic data on deforestation, released by the Government on Friday afternoon, demands ministers and officials start listening to the forestry industry and implement a comprehensive policy response, including reversing its disastrous 2002 decision to confiscate the carbon credits earned by forest owners since 1990, the Kyoto Forestry Association (KFA) said today.
“Ever since 2002, the forestry industry has been telling the Government that its decision to confiscate our carbon credits, which it had previously guaranteed us, would lead to a deforestation crisis,†KFA spokesman Roger Dickie said today.
“For five years, we have tried to explain to the Government that the 2002 confiscation had undermined investor confidence in the industry by bringing into question the Government’s commitment to property rights and its own policy promises.
“We have told successive ministers that people prepared to take the 25- to 30-year investment decision to invest in forestry need certainty that property rights and government promises are sacrosanct over up to ten elections.
“The Government, despite most of its ministers having no commercial background, has laughed off this information that we have offered in good faith, and instead told the forestry industry that it knows best what drives investment in our industry. Friday’s data, showing unprecedented deforestation of 13,000 hectares in a single year, clearly proves it was wrong.â€Â
Mr Dickie said the Government needed to start listening to the forestry industry, and to take the portfolio seriously.
“We don’t need ad hoc planting-subsidy schemes which cost the taxpayer a fortune but don’t deliver many new hectares, we don’t need massive retrospective taxes and we don’t need policy on the fly,†he said.
“All we need to get planting underway again is for the Government to reverse its 2002 decision to confiscate our carbon credits. Prime Minister Helen Clark and her ministers would be amazed and the country pleasantly surprised by the positive investor response it would see from that single decision.â€Â
“Ever since 2002, the forestry industry has been telling the Government that its decision to confiscate our carbon credits, which it had previously guaranteed us, would lead to a deforestation crisis,†KFA spokesman Roger Dickie said today.
“For five years, we have tried to explain to the Government that the 2002 confiscation had undermined investor confidence in the industry by bringing into question the Government’s commitment to property rights and its own policy promises.
“We have told successive ministers that people prepared to take the 25- to 30-year investment decision to invest in forestry need certainty that property rights and government promises are sacrosanct over up to ten elections.
“The Government, despite most of its ministers having no commercial background, has laughed off this information that we have offered in good faith, and instead told the forestry industry that it knows best what drives investment in our industry. Friday’s data, showing unprecedented deforestation of 13,000 hectares in a single year, clearly proves it was wrong.â€Â
Mr Dickie said the Government needed to start listening to the forestry industry, and to take the portfolio seriously.
“We don’t need ad hoc planting-subsidy schemes which cost the taxpayer a fortune but don’t deliver many new hectares, we don’t need massive retrospective taxes and we don’t need policy on the fly,†he said.
“All we need to get planting underway again is for the Government to reverse its 2002 decision to confiscate our carbon credits. Prime Minister Helen Clark and her ministers would be amazed and the country pleasantly surprised by the positive investor response it would see from that single decision.â€Â