Page 3943 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 15 Sept 2009
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more carbon than we are expected to sequester over the next seven years in one fire—one big fire for sure, but it serves as a valuable lesson about the status of our carbon stock. It again puts in perspective the potential of our urban and non-urban estates to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse emissions in the ACT. They can contribute, but it is a small amount, and there are issues around permanence because of the threat particularly of bushfire.
Having made those brief comments, as I said at the outset, I do welcome the report. I think it is a thorough report; I think it is a very useful contribution to the debate. I think it will be very helpful in informing both this Assembly and the government as we go forward looking to tackle the issue of the ACT’s greenhouse emissions.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.58): I would like to raise a few additional points about carbon sequestration and what we could do to improve our activities in this regard in the ACT. I know the government and the Greens appreciate that trees are a very important part of the carbon equation—I think the climate budget spending makes that very clear—and with such a high proportion of the climate change budget going to street tree planning and the arboretum, it is clear this is an important thing from their point of view. But we would like to see a better reflection from government policy of an understanding that soils, as well as smaller plant life, are also key parts of carbon sequestration, that our waste policy and parks and land management policies need to reflect this and reflect this sooner rather than later.
I would also like to underline today the importance of the need to reduce our emissions as a policy, to avoid the feel-good round of tree-planting, instead of maintaining existing carbon levels stored in trees, shrubs and grasses. I would like to point out also that, while climate change is a very major environmental issue, it is unfortunately not the only environmental issue.
To be truly sustainable, we need to think about our ecological footprint, not just our carbon footprint. Generally speaking, if we calculate our impacts by footprint, the ecological footprint of our activities shows the need at present for at least twice the number of planets than if we calculated just on the basis of our carbon footprint. In other words, carbon is not the whole story of the impacts. While we are talking about carbon sequestration here, in general I would like to see our discussion being more sophisticated than just looking at our carbon impacts.
I would like to start talking now about carbon and carbon in relation to soil. As I said, the ACT government does not as yet have a soils policy. In fact, I do not know whether any of the governments of Australia have a soils policy as yet. But Australia is an old, dry country, with the least amount of topsoil of any continent; and on dry, windy days, we watch it blow away. We have all seen those horrible pictures of Melbourne with no sun, due to wind blowing away the topsoil of Australia. We see it in Canberra as well on windy days, with the topsoil of the new suburbs being blown away. We need to value our soil. It is a major carbon store. We need to retain it and enhance it.
I think that we need to be measuring the levels of carbon in our soil and calculating the bio-sequestration of stable soil carbon. And if we understood the value of this, we could also be offering incentives to ACT rural landholders to be contributing to ACT
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