Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If I can just come back to this: I can completely understand why Australia has not wanted to elect forest management under article 3.4—for all of the reasons that have been said. And I also understand that if you elect for article 3. 4 and then there is a catastrophic bushfire, like those in Victoria, it blows any capacity for a country to meet their targets. That clearly is the reason that this whole accounting thing is being looked at—so that there is some legitimacy over time in the effort people are making to meet their targets.

I understand that, but what I am worrying about is: whilst you could leave out catastrophic events in order to get some evenness in response in getting your targets, the atmosphere does not know that difference, and in my view—and I think in the view of most scientists—we do not have time to wait for the trees to grow again and take that carbon down. So is there a proposition that there be, in the global budget and therefore the targets that are being asked of developed and developing countries, a higher target so that a percentage of the carbon budget is set aside as what might result from catastrophic events like this, regardless of where in the world that occurs? If that is not the case then we are going to exceed our carbon budget. We might meet our country targets, but if that amount of carbon is not factored in somewhere we are not going to meet the global target.