Tribe warned of felling penalty

Ngai Tahu should stop trees in its forests being felled if it wants to avoid a penalty of up to $120 million under the emissions trading scheme (ETS), the Government says.

The South Island tribe revealed yesterday it was up for a bill under the scheme of between $40 million and $120m depending on the price of carbon if forests on land it gained as part of its Treaty of Waitangi settlement were logged.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, forests planted before 1990 are used as part of the calculation to determine what a country's carbon emissions target should be by 2012, and therefore whether a country will have a bill to pay or is owed money under the scheme.

The ETS penalises owners of pre-1990 forests who have opted into the scheme and then cut down their trees, unless new forests are planted in their place.

Ngai Tahu chairman Mark Solomon said the scheme as it stood would constitute a breach of the tribe's settlement.

Ngai Tahu bought its forest land from the Crown with the open intention of converting it to farming once forestry licences expired, he said.

It paid for the land at its "best use" price, but the Government was now imposing restrictions that would mean the land could not be converted and would have to remain as forest, Solomon said.

The cost of this lost opportunity was up to $120m.

"There's no doubt that Maori collectively carry a huge financial burden on this," he said.

Ngai Tahu believes the government knew about the impact of the scheme when it negotiated the sale of forestry land to the iwi in 2001.

Climate Change Minister Nick Smith told Parliament yesterday that an independent review by Helen Aikman, QC, had rejected Ngai Tahu's claim and concluded that the then-government acted in good faith.

A copy of the report had been handed to Ngai Tahu for comment, he said.

Smith said Ngai Tahu's position was no different to that of any other forest owner, he said.

"Landowners who may be faced with forest companies removing their trees have the option of either replanting trees themselves, contracting with an alternative forest company to plant trees on the land or, in the event that they want to change the land use, incurring those liabilities."

Solomon said that if the government ignored the iwi's claim there were avenues of redress through the Waitangi Tribunal and the courts.

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