Build with wood and save farms

FORESTRY: Here’s a three-step plan to store more carbon and save farms, writes Marty Verry

New Zealand would need to convert fewer farms to forestry to meet emissions targets if we do two simple things. Both relate to storing more carbon per hectare of land.

The first is to incentivise storing carbon in longer-life wood products.

It is not well known that carbon accounting from forestry has two stages: tree growing and woodproduct storage. This second stage is referred to as Harvested Wood Products, or HWP for short, and we’re talking big numbers.

A report by Scion for the Ministry for Primary Industries in 2019 estimated the value of HWP accounting to New Zealand to average $250 million annually over the next 30 years.

We can increase this Harvested Wood Product accounting value in two ways: produce and use more long-lived products, or process more logs and low-grade timber here instead of sending them to Asia.

Studies commissioned by MPI and the Ministry for the Environment show that, in Asia, our wood is used for shorter life-products such as formwork for concrete and packaging, and this generates lower HWP accounting value for NZ than if used locally for longer-life construction.

Not only does increasing the value of Harvested Wood Products reduce the need for more farm conversions, but it also creates more wood processing jobs, particularly in regions with a high Ma¯ori workforce.

Further, it improves New Zealand’s poor imported carbon ledger by substituting products like local Cross Laminated Timber and glulam for imported steel and cement. The latter cause around 8 per cent of world