Queensland is destroying tree cover at the rate of 10 square kilometres a day, harming biodiversity while stoking doubts about federal government data that suggests emissions from land clearing are in decline.
The state Labor government has 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.
Fairfax Media reports 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, Dr Steven Miles, Queensland’s Environment Minister, said.
Despite Queensland traditionally accounting for the bulk of land-clearing in Australia, the conservative Liberal-National 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 somehow recording a big drop in deforestation emissions,” Mr Walker said.
Mr Walker said international observers questioned Australia over its land-clearing figures at climate talks in 2016, and the latest Queensland data were 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 NSW governments’ land-clearing estimates once they are published, he said, adding it will use the latest SLATS (2015-16) data to “inform the 2016 National Inventory”.
The acceleration in deforestation also reverses much of the federal government’s $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF).
About $1.4 billion of that money was spent on replanting trees or avoided deforestation.
Of that total, almost half went on 78 Queensland projects, The Wilderness Society said.
NSW, which has lately loosened its native vegetation clearing laws, received 44 per cent of that $1.4 billion for 136 vegetation-related projects.
The lack of federal control over land clearing in those two states “makes a mockery” of the ERF, Senator Janet Rice, the federal Australian Greens Party environment spokeswoman, said.
Queensland’s Deputy Premier Jackie Trad said the rate of tree clearing was “unsustainable” and Labor would again take proposals for tougher tree-clearing legislation to the looming state election.
“Alarmingly what this shows is that from the last full year that Labor was in office, 2011-12, tree clearing in Queensland has quadrupled,” Ms Trad said.
Queensland remains Australia’s worst greenhouse gas emitter in the country, according to the latest National Greenhouse Accounts.
Dr Miles also said scientific research clearly showed the impact on Queensland’s wildlife and on sediment flow down rivers which “choked the Reef.”
