James Henderson

James Henderson is a producer from Monto in Central Queensland and a co-founder of carbon and natural capital advisory IsidoreAg. In this contributed article, he argues that the Federal Government’s new environmental laws combined with a tightening of carbon and natural capital opportunities is pushing landholders to clear more trees than necessary.

If the brains trust behind federal environmental laws wanted to create a scenario where absolutely minimal natural ecosystem regeneration occurred in Australia then they’ve done it.

A combination of new EPBC (Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation) act that tore up the rule book farmers worked by, combined with the scrapping of the regrowth method for carbon projects have left farmers with no incentives to conserve native vegetation and every reason to spend unnecessary capital to tear it down.

A great time to be a dozer contractor or chemical company; A terrible time to be a tree.

This, of course, is the perverse environmental outcome delivered by a federal government convinced of the merits of a ‘command economy’, addicted to headlines, but too lazy to do the required policy grunt work.

If you wanted to create a situation where landholders in Australia had no incentive to regrow native vegetation, then the current policy settings are exactly what you would do.

No vegetation methods for Carbon Credits.

Human Induced Regeneration

The Human Induced Regeneration (HIR) carbon sequestration method finished in 2023. This was a method, popular with landholders, that let regrowth grow back to forest and covered about 42 million ha.

Three years later, no replacement methodology is available. The Integrated Farm and Land Management (IFLM) method is in development to replace it, but without much consultation with agriculture.

It looks to be very low yielding, complicated and requires landholders to account for all their land, not just what is in the project area. By all accounts, the cost of reporting and implementing the administration of the new method will outweigh the amount it will generate in carbon credits.

The complications around accounting for other properties not in the project area, but part of the business, make it un-appealing to producers. Isidore AG has had conversations with several producers waiting for this new method, however delays in the methods release and the new EPBC changes have resulted in most producers choosing to remove their regrowth.

Avoided re-clearing/native reforestation

The Avoided Re-clearing and Native Reforestation carbon method is the new version of Avoided Clearing. Under this method a landholder gets paid not to clear vegetation in Category X.

This new method will only have a narrow window of crediting, probably when regrowth is between 8 and 15 years old. After that it will be captured by the new EPBC rules.

Loads of industry advice about the permanence periods was ignored. The proposed 50 or 100 year permanence periods for something that only generates credits for 7-8 years will have limited uptake, as producers look back at the original avoided clearing that was 25-year permanence. Landholders who were interested in this method have looked at this proposal (Including myself) and chose to clear the regrowth instead.

Nature Repair Market a missed opportunity

The decision to not have the nature repair market used as a way of standardising and simplifying the environmental offset market has also added to the confusion and is a missed opportunity.

Environmental offsets are needed when infrastructure projects need to be built. This means everything from renewables projects, houses, and mine sites need environmental offsets. These offsets largely rely on private landholders entering into agreements about their vegetation in category X areas, with vegetation that is 15 years and older the most sort after.

There was a chance when the Nature Repair Market was launched to roll up similar certifications, such as Accounting for Nature and move to a credit system for environmental offsets.

This was opposed by groups such as the Australia Institute and Farmers for Climate action.

If a credit-based market using the Nature Repair Market existed these credits could have formed the basis of environmental offset agreements required for new builds in Australia.

This means a developer could purchase credits at the start of a project, meaning delays for construction could be cut as the process of finding the offset would be reduced and landholders would have incentive to hold onto vegetation 15 years and older and manage it into better condition.

EPBC confusion

New EPBC rules have only incentivised landholders to remove as much native vegetation as possible. For some this will mean more bulldozers and others more chemical.

While the Government tries to play down this regulatory burden, the message heard by farmers is that once native regrowth hits 15 years old, it can’t be cleared. The only answer to protect your livelihood? Don’t let your native vegetation grow.

The current run of bulldozers and chemicals going into native regrowth is the highest it has been for years. None of it will show up in clearing data, because it will not show up as “Forest being cleared”. So, if there are no ways of getting paid for your native regrowth vegetation and you will lose the right to control it once it reaches 15 years old, for 90pc of landholders, the answer is simple. Knock it down and keep it down. Again, that’s what I’m doing.

The above drivers are compounded by the current political environment. Where the left, is calling for new methods to be scraped along with the safeguard mechanism ( the thing that generates demand for carbon credits). The right are calling for the same.

No more carbon projects, and no more safeguard mechanism. Both are doing so from Ideological points of view, and one could guess that both have the goal of not seeing landholders make more money.

What does this mean? It means its a bad time to be a tree in Queensland.

More reading on this topic

• Carbon farming: The side of net zero running out of friends
• Listen: Murray Watt discuesses industry concerns about EPBC