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Talk for Sustainability Forum, Bermagui, 5 November 2006 Suzanne Foulkes The great concerns facing all of us are climate change and water shortages. There is no longer any debate in the scientific community about the profound challenge these changes present. The Australian people are calling for action from governments NOW. 75 per cent of voters want the Government to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and 80 per cent think the big polluters should pay a tax on their emissions. And 92 per cent of Australians don't think the Commonwealth is doing enough to invest in clean, renewable energy. And the figures show it's not just Labor and Greens voters who want change. It is right across the political spectrum. This is not a time for further political spin and prevarication. Both major parties and all levels of government have a dismal track record of supporting and defending industries like coal and forestry that are major contributors to global warming. With both State and Federal elections due in 2007 we have to make it very clear to Ministers and to candidates that we know the problems are not being properly addressed and that the environment is the political issue.
We know about emissions from fossil fuel burning being a major cause
of global warming, Equally it is vitally important that the continued destruction of our forests is halted and deforestation included on the agenda of any debate on climate change. The report released last week by U.K. economist Nicholas Stern makes the point that “Action to avoid further deforestation should be an urgent priority”. A forest is a metaphor for life. Forest ecology is very complex. Everything is related. So that damage in one element has repercussions throughout the biosystem. Humanity can no longer afford to see itself as separate. Have a look at the maps here today, you will see that virtually every major water catchment on the SE coast is in State Forest hands. All of them have been logged severely and burned repeatedly over the last 40 years, every stream is silted up, every estuary has suffered heavy sedimentation, which suffocates the natural water plants and prevents fish breeding. Given the dependence of coastal communities on hinterland catchments this aspect of logging has very significant implications for water supplies. In the NSW State Regional Planning Strategy we are told that the majority of water supply catchments are protected within State Forests. How can this be? Look at what is actually happening! There is no protection whatsoever within the boundaries of State Forests for any conservation values. And there is overwhelming evidence from scientists to support this. Another of the challenges mentioned in that document is “better understanding and management of natural hazards”. One of these is erosion. Yet it is well established that the practice of intensive integrated logging– it is virtual clear-felling - produces a massive amount of soil disturbance. When combined with post-logging fire, the soil surface is exposed to a degree that makes large scale sheet and gully erosion inevitable. The removal of the forest canopy allows high intensity rain to bombard the exposed soil and cause run-off loaded with silt. These are the forestry practices that are destroying our forests and the water transpiration cycles that our rainfall depends on. According to the Department of Conservation the South East region also has some 200 threatened plant and animal communities. It is not common knowledge that most of the areas that might provide a refuge were severely degraded by forestry logging and burning before being handed over as National Parks, and have largely lost their capacity to recover the biodiversity necessary to support fauna. This is why our koalas are on the brink of regional extinction. All that Minister for the Environment Bob Debus could offer so far has been yet another survey costing the taxpayers half a million dollars. Climate change can only exacerbate the threatened extinction of plant and animal species. C.S.I.R.O atmospheric researcher Helen Cleugh says forests can mop up about one quarter of the world’s atmospheric emissions. Forests function as the worlds major air filter removing carbon monoxide and other air pollutants. Forests and their soils are a major sink for carbon, making deforestation a major driving force behind global warming. Water transpiration from trees returns water to the atmosphere. Deforestation causes diminished rainfall and increased desertification. The trees and their understorey plants retain water in the soil and keep it moist, they protect the land surface from landslides and erosion and prevent sediment runoff into streams. When you see loaded log trucks, they are a constant feature on the Princes Highway, think about what we re losing every day – 163 trucks going into the chipmill – a threat to our safety in more ways than one. When the trees are removed these forests lose the ability to function as water catchments should. Regrowth after logging also takes up around twice as much water as mature forests. And it takes about 150 years to return to old growth water yield. The loss of the soils’ water-holding capacity following logging, and the loss of leaf cover due to removal of vegetation, and burning, obviously causes logged forests to dry out to a much greater degree than unlogged forests. This makes them far more fire-prone. In our regional forests most of the nutrients necessary for plant and animal life are captured in the trees rather than the soils. Removal of the trees therefore removes these nutrients permanently, impoverishing the soils. Post logging burning and wildfire are recognised as the greatest precursors to changes in water chemistry in logged catchments.
From a water supply perspective the intensive clear-fell logging
practised in the Eden and Gippsland
Water is the highest value product that can be obtained from our
native forests.
In this region CSIRO studies have established beyond any doubt that massive erosion and siltation of waterways is being caused in our regional forests by the sheer scale of logging for woodchips. This has been apparent for many years. So why have we not seen this disastrous woodchipping industry stopped, with its wilful and criminal neglect of our most vital asset – water? One million tons of native forest timber from South East NSW and Gippsland has been exported from the Eden mill as woodchips this year. And the Regional Forest Agreements have until 2018 to run: 12 more years! 12 million more tons still to come just from this region, at current rates – and around eight to nine times as much nationally. Clearly unsustainable, clearly devastating to our wildlife, our native forests and our water catchments. And clearly a very significant contribution to global warming. Logging our native forests is no longer necessary, because there is plenty of plantation timber available in Australia and globally. Plantation timber is preferred by the paper makers. Hence NSW can only compete by selling native forest chips at a lower price. And employment in the industry has declined to a fraction of what it used to be. The average price for logs sent to the Eden mill is $14 a tonne – and remember that over 90% of logs go there from virtually clear-felled forests. So that is all that the mill pays for all the high quality logs that could be kept for high value uses. The return from royalties paid by the mill to the NSW Government is meagre – from the Eden RFA area around $5 million a year. (A lot of money to all of us, but a drop the ocean of the NSW budget of around $4 billion.) Certainly less than the costs to the taxpayer of Forest NSW’s activities in the region, vastly less than the timber is worth, and vastly less than remediation costs (not that restitution is any part of the agreement). It is truly an economic scandal as well as an environmental one.
Our regional forests are still as much at risk as they have ever been. The signatures of support from over 2000 people in our locality and many, many others from all over Australia are calling for
Both major parties and all three levels of government have supported disastrous forest policies, and continue to resist reviewing them in spite of the overwhelming evidence of the urgency of doing so. David Suzuki has said he "believes future generations will look back on the inactivity, the unwillingness to do anything, as a crime. It is outrageous that we are not taking advantage of foresight, our predictive capacity to see where the dangers lie, seize the opportunities, and make our way into a more liveable future".
He also said, “it seemed mad that Australia should grow cotton and
rice when the focus should be on crops that can handle the climate". As Howard acted to protect mining and oil interests he showed no concern for the rest of us, or for our future. This is the Government that openly and energetically protects wood-chipping of our forests, rice farming and cotton growing, to the detriment of whole river systems. This Government is completely out of touch with environmental reality. Just one of many specific examples: Federal Minister for the Environment, Ian Campbell, gave the go-ahead to log a National Heritage listed forest in Tasmania’s Recherche Bay, stating that he “could see no reason why forestry practices and National Heritage Forests could not co-exist”!! Perhaps Mr Campbell should be the Minister for Fantasy rather than the Minister for the Environment. The Labour Party is not much better. It was Bob Carr who promised in 1995 to end native forest woodchipping, yet signed the regional forest agreement with the Howard Government in 1998. This agreement still stands, underpinning the current destruction of our forests. There has been a total refusal to review these arrangements by the NSW Government in spite of the legal requirement to do so written into the Regional Forest Agreements. Our own local Council has doggedly stuck to a world’s worst practice sewerage scheme, wasting millions of litres of drinking water annually and then polluting the sea with ocean outfall waste. This decision was taken, in spite of tried and proven alternatives, in spite of public outrage, and regardless of the world’s scientists warning us that we are facing critical water shortages. How can we make our representatives and politicians respond to this crisis? How can we make them behave responsibly? It is now very clear that the Australian people are way ahead of their governments in wanting action to prevent the inevitable collapse of the ecosystems that are our life-giving natural heritage. We may have elected them, but the Australian people did not give a mandate to any politician to destroy our environment, and with it our future prospects.
So what can we do? We all know that we can do quite a lot ourselves to be conservative with water and energy. I strongly recommend joining a community group, because the impetus for change is coming from the community itself. We must keep up the pressure, stand up for our rights and get involved. – it is so much better than thinking there is nothing we can do. Discussion with friends and family is important. There are now some indications that the political mood is shifting, however reluctantly, at least at the Commonwealth level. A speech by the head of the Commonwealth Treasury last Thursday (2 October 20006) talked about the policy failures of governments regarding access to natural resources like water, timber and fish stocks, and widespread environmental degradation, including a long history of habitat destruction and species extermination. So let’s try to shift the political mood a lot further. Because it is only with meaningful policy changes by governments, and environmentally sound practices by industry, that we can succeed. We have to continue make our determination to see change loud and clear to all our political representatives. We need leaders with both strong and genuine environmental values to stand up for our rights and the future of our children – leaders who can turn things around. We need them very soon. We need them now! With both Commonwealth and State elections in 2007 we have opportunities to make sure candidates understand the issues and our determination. Also the opportunity to elect representatives who will give these changes the highest priority. Be very careful who you vote for, because there will be a lot of spin. We will put contact addresses on the Five Forests website. Writing to Ministers and candidates; sending emails; telephone calls to their offices … not just once, but repeatedly. Join in your local radio discussions. Write to your local paper – have your say. Make it a habit!! Keep up the pressure. Our future depends on it.
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