With daily media coverage on global warming and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, community attention has been drawn to organisations offering carbon credits.

Forests NSW has been at the vanguard of Australia’s carbon accounting and trading efforts, working in the area since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

“We began our carbon accounting research program in the late 1990s and after meeting rigorous technical and scientific requirements, we started selling forest-based carbon credits in the form of greenhouse gas abatement certificates through the NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme in 2005,” said manager investor relations, Nick Cameron.

“We were the first in the world to offer forest-based credits in a registered scheme.

“It’s an emerging and increasingly significant area of our business, and we are watching national and international movements with interest,” he said.

Nick said that while a wide and increasing variety of organisations were now offering tree planting services to combat global warming, Forests NSW has a long history of managing forests for timber and, more recently, carbon.

“For close to 100 years we have been stewards of State forests for the people of NSW.

“Our management is for the long term, with a typical plantation having a harvesting cycle of 30 years,” he said.

“We have also been at the forefront of developing rigorous techniques and standards for accurately measuring and accounting for carbon stored in growing forests.

“As our plantations are being managed to produce both timber and carbon credits, buyers of our forest-based credits can rest assured that the trees will grow well and lock up carbon dioxide – with a continually rotating pool of growing trees.”

For more information on the NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme see www.greenhousegas.nsw.gov.au

This article appears in the Spring 2007 edition of Bush Telegraph Magazine.