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PRESS RELEASE - Friday 10th October 2003

Carbon – the new tree product which could allow farmers to make profit from reversing land degradation.

Professor Syd Shea, the Chairman of The Oil Mallee Company and Executive Director of the Institute of Natural Resource Management at the University of Notre Dame said that "Planting trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions on cleared farmland could create a multibillion dollar industry in regional Australia while at the same time making a major reduction in land degradation.” Professor Shea was delivering a paper on "Carbon Trading” at the State Landcare Conference which is being held at Katanning this week.

Professor Shea said that during a week long visit to Japan (which has ratified the Kyoto Protocol) in September he had been consistently told by a number of Companies that Japanese Companies would sponsor major tree planting programs in Australia if the Australian Government ratified the protocol.

Farmers who had participated in the Mallee Eucalypt planting program which was initiated by expert farmers like the late Don Stanley had demonstrated that it was possible to integrate Mallee tree belts into the farm with minimal impact on traditional farming practices.

Farmers could be paid between $A50 and $A130 per hectare per annum net to lease the land to grow belts of Mallee trees on their farm. Alternatively farmers could undertake tree planting programs which, provided they complied with the protocol rules, could be traded just like any other commodity.

Apart from losing an opportunity to attack land degradation on the scale which was required Australia risked facing ecological trade barriers if it did not ratify the protocol.

Professor Shea said, "Few overseas counties realised the capacity of Mallee Eucalypts to absorb carbon dioxide and the scale of planting which was possible. Three million hectares of Mallee eucalypt belts would absorb 80 million tons of carbon dioxide per year at a cost of less than $A10 per ton”

Western Australia was the most suitable location in the world to establish large tree plantings to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

"That is twice the amount that Australia was allowed to increase its emissions by and would be sufficient to offset all of the carbon dioxide which would be produced if all the major Western Australian resource projects currently being built or planned proceed” Professor Shea said.
" If we are committed to meeting the Kyoto targets it was difficult to understand why we disqualified ourselves from the benefits of the protocol by not ratifying it.”

Professor Shea said "Our research confirms that planting trees to ameliorate salinity would be a profitable venture if the carbon dioxide locked up in the trees could be sold”

Contact: Professor Syd Shea 0403 309 003