Australia's Forest Policies

Australia has a well-established institutional framework to support the conservation and sustainable management of forests. Forest policy in Australia is developed and implemented at the national, state and territory levels. State and territory governments have primary responsibility for forest management.

What are governments doing?

The Australian, state and territory governments are all signatories to the 1992 National Forest Policy Statement (NFPS). The NFPS provides the framework within which the governments can cooperatively achieve their vision for sustainable management of Australia's forests whilst ensuring that community expectations are met.

A key element of the approach adopted in the NFPS involved the negotiation of Regional Forest Agreements (RFAs) between the Australian and some state governments. RFAs are 20-year plans for the conservation and sustainable management of Australia’s native forests; they are designed to provide certainty for forest-based industries, forest-dependent communities and conservation.

RFAs use a science-based methodology to determine forest allocation for different uses and forest management strategies, and are the result of substantial scientific study, consultation and negotiation covering a diverse range of interests.

In addition to the NFPS and the RFAs, the Australian Government has a number of key forest policies to achieve key conservation and management outcomes for Australia’s forest and forest industries.

• Plantations for Australia the 2020 Vision: The 2020 Vision is a strategic partnership between the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments and the plantation timber growing and processing industries. The overarching principle of the Vision strategy is to enhance regional wealth creation and international competitiveness through a sustainable increase in Australia's plantations, based on a notional target of trebling the area of commercial tree crops to around 3 million hectares by 2020.
• National Indigenous Forestry Strategy: The Australian Government has developed a National Indigenous Forestry Strategy in consultation with Indigenous communities and forest industry stakeholders. A key aim of NIFS is to encourage Indigenous participation in the forest industry by forming business partnerships with the forestry industry to provide long-term benefits to Indigenous communities, as well as to the forest and wood products industry.