Carbon offsets have rightly earned distrust, but the new Improved Native Forest Management method could protect native forests, store carbon and penalise future logging rather than delay decarbonisation.

Carbon offsets are highly controversial. At their simplest, they are a mechanism that allows polluters to increase their emissions if they pay another person to reduce theirs. Textbook economists will tell you this will ensure emissions are reduced at least cost. However, a large scientific literature has repeatedly shown that, in most cases, offsets do not lead to real and genuine emission reductions.

The repeated practical failure of carbon offsets, both in Australia and elsewhere, has led many people to reject them outright. This is an understandable perspective. For too long, governments and other administrators have seen offsets as a dodge; a way to delay decarbonisation under false pretences.

While scepticism is warranted, not all carbon offsets are bad. For example, in Australia, there are over 300 carbon offset projects involving environmental plantings, where the aim is to restore previously cleared ecosystems using native species. Our long-term research and monitoring shows that these projects both sequester carbon and provide important biodiversity benefits in often highly modified farming landscapes.

Last month, a new set of rules (known as a ‘method’) was made under the Australian carbon credit unit scheme that provides opportunities for state governments to earn credits for stopping native forest logging. Like environmental plantings, this new ‘Improved Native Forest Management’ (INFM) method creates an opportunity for genuinely good carbon offset projects that help protect and restore native forests degraded through decades of commercial logging.

Under this new INFM method, state governments will need to define their projects as encompassing all the public native forests designated for commercial forestry use across a whole forestry region. These regions are areas that generally incorporate two or more million hectares of forest. They then need to specify one or more ‘carbon protection areas’ within the region, where harvesting will be prohibited for a minimum of 100 years.........

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