Carbon credit projects that claim to fight climate change by regrowing Australia's forests are largely failing, new research has found.
Ten academics from three universities have published a paper that promises to reignite debate over the integrity of Australia's carbon credits.
They analysed 182 projects that use the controversial human-induced regeneration (HIR) method to generate carbon credits for the offset market.
HIR projects are supposed to capture and lock up carbon over time, by regenerating native forests though land use changes.
It's not about planting trees. Typically it's about allowing for natural renewal and stopping activities like cattle grazing that might suppress regrowth.
But the new paper, published in a prestigious international journal, found the projects are largely failing and forests are not regenerating as anticipated.
Researchers say that's entirely unsurprising to them, given the projects are mainly located in dry, outback areas in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia.
"Almost 80 per cent of the projects experienced negative or negligible change in tree cover over the study period," says Australian National University professor Andrew Macintosh, who worked on the paper.
"The projects in the study received more than 27 million credits over the period of analysis and most of them claim regeneration started around 2010 to 2014.
"Their effects on woody vegetation cover should be very clear by now but the data suggest tree cover has barely increased at all and, in many cases, it has gone backwards."
