The Carbon Coalition’s optimistic outlook on the potential of soil carbon has often placed it on the other side of the fence from mainstream opinion, but increasingly, it seems the fence is shifting the Coalition’s way.
Coalition co-convenor Michael Kiely has congratulated the Wentworth Group for its "paradigm shift to a sane view of soil sequestration".
"We are seeing an industry-wide opening-up on the issue," Mr Kiely said.
However, Mr Kiely queries some aspects of the Wentworth Group’s paper, including its emphasis on sequestration through trees, and the question marks it places over measurement and permanence of soil carbon.
"Soil will never fit the old, inflexible paradigm, so the world will need to be flexible," Mr Kiely said, adding that the Kyoto rules could have been written to keep soils out of the carbon market.
The Wentworth Group’s Peter Cosier agrees that change is needed.
"We're now very close to introducing an emissions trading scheme where bits of terrestrial carbon are included and bits aren't; we think that’s a poor outcome," he said.
With the CPRS now scheduled to kick off just six months before the Kyoto Protocol expires, Mr Cosier said there was no longer a strong argument for designing the CPRS around Kyoto rules.
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