Government offers carbon credits to forest owners

1.00pm

The owners of permanent forests established since 1990 will be able to get Kyoto Protocol carbon credits under a new climate change policy, the Government said today.

Pete Hodgson, the minister in charge of climate change, said the move recognised the long-term value of permanent reforestation.

"This programme creates an opportunity for landowners, probably of largely marginal land, to gain financially by re-establishing permanent forests," he said.

"Landowners meeting the requirements of the Future Forests programme will be able to get internationally tradeable carbon credits they can bank or sell."

As a further incentive for reforestation, owners would be able to harvest timber from their forests but only after 35 years on a continuous canopy basis.

Earlier harvesting or clearfelling would incur penalty payments.

Mr Hodgson said credits would be allocated through contracts between forest land owners and the Crown, registered against land titles and binding all future owners.

Carbon credits, or emission units, are internationally tradeable and add to the financial value of a project that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Markets for trading the units are still being developed and they do not have a specific value at this time.

- NZPA