PODCAST: Foresters fear impact on investment from emissions trading tinkering
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Mike Smith
New
Zealand’s latest moves on emissions trading has switched the country’s forestry
investment profile from being very stable to very risky in terms of government
policy, says a Roger Dickie of the Kyoto Forestry Association (KFA).
Mr
Dickie was commenting after reports the government plans to introduce a carbon
price cap and a ban on the international trade in carbon credits generated
under a planned NZ emissions trading scheme (ETS).
[Editor's Note: The government subsequently received a report from a parliamentary committee warning about the inherently negative signals for forestry a cap and trade mechanism would throw out.]
The
KFA comprises a group of more than 30,000 members, representing about half of
the Kyoto
forest planted - half of the 550,000 hectares qualified as forests planted
after 1990.The KFA is made up mainly of
the larger forest owning companies along with those larger forest investment
companies representing individual investors, many of whom have put their
retirement funds into forestry.
Interviewed
for a southem.com podcast, Mr Dickie said investors in New Zealand
forests had always been able to rely on very stable government policy, so that
hadn’t been a risk they had to enter into as opposed to some other countries. The
latest news is just one of several policy shifts causing anxiety among
investors.
