The heated debate that accompanied the NSW Government’s decision to link carbon credits to the creation of the Great Koala National Park has led me to look closer at activities that generate those credits.
To say the system is open to rorting, and that some claims made to support the so-called benefits of those activities are questionable, would be a massive understatement.
Tree planting, when properly managed and overseen, is probably one of the least questionable ways of earning carbon credits. However, having recently suffered the terminal impacts of bushfire, I posed the question, “what happens when, after receiving and selling carbon credits, the trees are killed by bushfire?”
The answer was that: “Project proponents must actively manage these risks and provide a permanence plan to protect the carbon sequestered”. Really?
This conjured up images of TV advertisements for a certain insurance company, showing spot-fires igniting across the landscape before being instantly doused by spouts of water from the ground.
Unfortunately, this sort of fantasy world doesn’t exist in reality. How can anyone provide a permanence plan against vandalism?
There was also mention of insurance, which is fine for the proponent, but doesn’t negate the carbon emissions that occurred when the trees burned, or render invalid the carbon credits that have already been sold to a polluter.
The guaranteed benefits for soil carbon sequestration are even more hazy, so I won’t go there. However, in the USA, another supposed “win-win-win for the climate” is emerging; it’s called ‘biomass burial’.
This has emerged following devastating wildfires that have destroyed vast areas of pine forest across North America in recent decades, where burying the trunks of dead trees in huge pits is deemed better than burning them.
Knowing that the roots, stumps and branches were burned prior to burial, and seeing images of vast treeless landscapes, with huge machines belching carbon emissions, it’s impossible to view this as any win for the climate. However, one certainty is this; where there’s a buck to be made, the ‘shonks’ will find a way to capitalise.
- John Edwards
Published in the Voices for the Earth column in The Clarence Valley Independent, 30th October, 2026
