Page 3946 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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the discussion on this important report. The carbon sequestration report is the first time that carbon stock and sequestration rates have been measured for an entire Australian state or territory. The production of the report is a direct result of action 43 of the ACT government climate change strategy, weathering the change.
The report assesses both carbon stocks and sequestration levels from 2008 to 2015 and will significantly inform government policy development concerning tree planting, ecosystem management and future carbon offset activities. The report will also help us to value the environmental services provided by our vegetation and understand the impact of the 2003 fires on the local carbon cycle. The report adds to our understanding of the impact of climate change on our ecosystem and the various mitigation and adaptation options before us. Therefore, the report will assist us, as a community, to make better decisions about city design and how we interact with the environment.
It is worth noting that the report is a wide-ranging one but it is often the case, when faced with solid policy research, that detractors will cherry-pick what they want and seek to make a political point from it. The government have sought to take a different approach. We released our research to the whole community as part of our ongoing policy development process.
I would like to turn now to the report’s findings. The report adds to the global research on sequestration but brings it to a very local focus. It looked at our urban estate—street trees growing on territory land, trees in urban parks and within the Canberra nature reserve—and the non-urban estate of the ACT, our parks, reserves, unplanted parks and reserves in the urban area, leasehold farmland, pine plantations and, of course, the arboretum. The report looked at the carbon emitted from the 2003 bushfires, the increase in the Cotter Dam wall, the arboretum and the conversion of woodland and grassland for urban land development.
Trees on private leasehold land were not included, a point I think that has been missed in the debate when there has been some public commentary on block size in the ACT. Whilst there are a range of concerns that are quite legitimate in that debate, it would be wrong to say that, based on this report, there is evidence to support an argument that those blocks are contributing less in terms of sequestration, because the study did not look at those blocks.
I think it really is worth restating some of the key findings. The report found that the carbon stock in the non-urban forest is 28 million tonnes, and the urban forest is a further 10 per cent of that amount. The amount of carbon stored in the urban and non-urban forests will rise each year by 29,400 tonnes for the next seven years, a total increase of 206,000 tonnes to 2015. The non-urban native forest contains 95 per cent of the current carbon stock in vegetation biomass. However, this sector only produced 28 per cent of the projected sequestration between 2008 and 2015. The pine forest contains four per cent of the total carbon stock and sequestered 24 per cent of projected sequestration, while the urban forest, with only one per cent of the current carbon stock, produced 48 per cent of the projected sequestration.
The report found that urban trees are more effective at sequestering carbon than native trees because of their relative youth. Trees between 25 and 45 years of age are the
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