KEY POINTS:
New official figures on deforestation and new forest planting point to a looming blowout in the taxpayer's liability under the Kyoto climate change treaty.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry said yesterday that in the year to March 2006, 12,900ha, or a third of the commercial forest area harvested, was not replanted.
The previous year 7000ha, or 17 per cent of the harvested area was not replanted.
These deforestation rates represent a jump from the historical pattern when typically all but 3 to 5 per cent of the forest harvested was replanted in trees.
The figures for new planting compound the trend.
MAF official Paul Lane said the ministry estimated 5000ha of new forest was planted last year compared with 6000ha in 2005 and 10,000ha the year before.
New Zealand is expected to fall short by some 41 million tonnes of carbon dioxide of its target under the Kyoto Protocol. The target is to reduce its net emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming to 1990 levels, on average, between 2008 and 2012.
It will have to buy carbon credits on the international market to cover the shortfall before the time comes to square accounts with other Kyoto countries.
The Treasury currently estimates the potential liability for the five-year period at $557 million. That assumes 21 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from deforestation.
But if the average level of deforestation for the past two years - 10,000ha a year - continued through the 2008 to 2012 period, emissions from deforestation would be about twice that.
Other elements of the Treasury's calculation of the Kyoto liability also look fragile. The carbon price it assumes is only about a third of that prevailing in the most liquid carbon market, the internal European one, and the exchange rate assumed is the current very high one.
MAF said most of the deforestation occurred in the central North Island and Canterbury.
The land was mostly converted to pasture.
Although the Government has yet to announce its policy, discussion documents released late last year indicate it intends to impose a cost on forest owners who opt to deforest, mostly likely through a cap-and-trade system.
But there is likely to be a minimum threshold, of perhaps 100ha, below which the new regime would not apply.
Critics of the proposed policy say it creates a perverse incentive to deforest now, while the going is good.
