DEAR News Of The Area,
AS a scientist, as an Australian and as a resident of the Mid North Coast near the proposed Great Australian Koala Park, the behaviour by the NSW Premier in allowing ongoing clearing in the proposed Great Koala National Park is offensive to me at so many levels.
Last year, then Opposition Leader and now NSW Premier Chris Minns pledged to develop the Great Koala National Park.
Yet his government’s policies allow the continuing degradation of this and other precious native forests in NSW while they scramble to see how they can use these forests as a tradeable asset in a planned carbon offset scheme.
Minns himself has said: “You have to have the system up and running before you can quarantine a park or an area to allow for that area or that zone to be eligible for the carbon transfer. If you do it in reverse, then you can’t retroactively go to that national park or that forest”.
In other words, let’s make the Park more of a commercial asset rather than a place to protect biodiversity.
Meanwhile the forests within the park are being steadily degraded, with more than 106 sectors in the proposed Great Koala National Park already closed for the harvesting of native timber.
The legitimacy of carbon offset schemes has repeatedly been called into serious question, realising their ineffectiveness in fighting climate change, and their use by many companies as a license to pollute.
Victoria and WA have taken the lead in banning native forest logging, while NSW wallows in the backwash, more concerned with fanciful strategy than genuine action.
Regards,
Paul DAVIES,
Principal,
Think Sustainability.