Lyndall Bull
Forests and Wood Products Australia Award Winner
Understanding how landowners feel about forest carbon sinks
Reducing carbon emissions is one of the greatest global challenges of the century and in Australia, a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) will commence on 1 July 2011.
Within both regulatory and voluntary markets, landowners have the opportunity to sell carbon credits from reforestation activities.
“There’s been lots of research done to identify the area of land suitable for reforestation to mitigate Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions,” said ANU’s Dr Lyndall Bull.
“And the Australian business community has come up with innovative solutions to create and sell carbon offsets.
“However, we don’t know very much about how Australian landowners feel about using their land for planting of forest carbon offset sinks, or how well-informed they are about the rules and regulations of carbon trading.
“And so we cannot accurately predict the contribution that reforestation is likely to make to reducing carbon emissions.”
Lyndall will conduct a series of interviews and a survey to gain comprehensive knowledge of landowners understanding of the reforestation opportunity and their planting intentions.
“My findings will help improve the accuracy of current modeling of reforestation potential in Australia and our ability to meet carbon reduction targets,” said Lyndall.
“I hope to provide policy makers with insight into the reforestation plans of landowners, which they can then use to develop appropriate policies to get the best benefits from reforestation activities.”