Surge in landclearing mocks Aust emissions data
AUSTRALIA: Queensland is destroying tree cover at the rate of 10 square kilometres a day, harming biodiversity while stoking doubts about federal data suggesting emissions from land clearing are in decline.
On Thursday, the state Labor government revealed Queensland cleared an ‘‘alarming’’ 395,000 hectares of land in 2015-16 according to its Statewide Landcover and Trees Study (SLATS).
The land-clearing rate was up a third on the previous year. Almost half the area cleared was in river catchments near the Great Barrier Reef, increasing the flow of sediment onto offshore corals.
Emissions from the destruction of vegetation amounted to 45 million tonnes for that year, Steven Miles, Queensland’s Environment Minister, said.
Despite Queensland traditionally accounting for the bulk of land-clearing in Australia, the federal government’s greenhouse gas inventory for the 2015-16 year showed emissions from land use changes only amounted to 1.7 million tonnes.
That figure was down 13 per cent from a year earlier. Even taking into account the possibility some areas added tree cover, the discrepancy between state and federal numbers should intensify concerns about the reliability of the national data, Glenn Walker, a climate change campaigner with The Wilderness Society, said.
‘‘It’s just inexplicable that while Queensland deforestation and land clearing is spiking dramatically, the federal government is some- how recording a big drop in deforestation emissions,’’ Walker said.
He said international observers questioned Australia over its landclearing figures at climate talks in 2016, and the latest data was likely to prompt more queries.
‘‘For our Kyoto targets Australia has had to do very little in reducing emissions in our energy sector, transport and elsewhere, simply because we’ve been able to bring down land-clearing rates,’’ he said.
Fairfax Media sought a response from Josh Frydenberg, the federal environment minister.
A spokesman for the Environment Department stood by the federal figures, saying it used ‘‘Landsat satellite data to identify land clearing across Australia using a consistent methodology developed in collaboration with the CSIRO Data61’’ and used Geoscience Australia’s ‘‘big data’’ Data Cube.
It also uses additional datasets such as the Queensland and New South Wales governments’ landclearing estimates, he said, adding it will use the latest SLATS (2015-16) data to ‘‘inform the 2016 National Inventory’’.
‘‘Each year, we update land clearing estimates based on latest satellite data,’’ he said. ‘‘Where applicable, we also revise estimates to reflect improvements in remote sensing and estimation methods.’’
The acceleration in deforestation also reverses much of the federal government’s $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). – Fairfax