Time to Stop Planning Parks and get into Forests

A former quarry provides a diverse set of micro-habitats supporting a wide range of fl ora and fauna (above) but the scattering of trees on a dry grass area no longer makes the grade (below).

Veteran recreation planner and consultant Ken Marriott believes it is time for government to reduce the undue focus on urban street tree and canopy planting and instead focus on urban and rural forests

It is now critical that all levels of government in Australia and New Zealand stop planning parks and get into re-establishing forest, woodland, grassland and marine reserve ecosystems. This is because even if our countries can reach net zero emissions by 2050, the volumes of CO2 and other gases already in the atmosphere are far too high and will continue to drive global warming unless these are substantially reduced, and at present, only vegetation can do that.

Even though experimental plants have been established, the development of reliable, effective technological tools to capture and store climate change gases is still years away. Two types of technology are needed: carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 is captured at the point of emission from industry, extraction sites and power stations prior to be being pumped underground, and the more critical direct air capture (DAC). DAC extracts CO2 and other climate change gases directly from the atmosphere. CCS stops more emissions while DAC helps to get rid of the existing excess. DAC can happen anywhere and it has been suggested that plants could be sited in non-arable areas where high solar rates would provide the power to operate them.

In Australia, the Climate Council has estimated that in addition to stopping emissions, 12 billion tonnes of existing excess climate change gases need to be extracted from the atmosphere annually well into the foreseeable future. Experimental CCS and DAC plants are presently extracting somewhere around 4 million tonnes globally. As a consequence, our only realistic recourse at present are trees, other woody vegetation, grasslands and marine vegetation. This is highlighted by recent ABC Australia reporting which indicated that DAC currently costs around $1,000 per tonne of gas extraction whereas tree planting costs around $30 per tonne. At present, there are not even experimental DAC plants in Australia.

In light of the above, governments at all levels have to stop thinking about street tree and canopy plantings as the solution to climate change and urban heat islands. These might abate the immediate glare and heat of our weather and add to urban amenity and shading, but they do not address climate change and the high levels of maintenance they require may well add to the problem and distract attention from other more effective action.

Urban and rural “forests” (regardless of the species) provide the opportunity to re-develop ecosystems that have the capacity to capture climate change gases and protect the vegetation that is planted. They also provide breathing space for technical CCS and DAC strategies.

However, planting programs cannot see a continuation of the practice of scattering a few trees across informal parklands and mowing between them on a regular basis.. Climate change

Scattering a few trees across informal parklands is not good enough.

means this is almost certain to fail. Soils overheat and dry out and the soil biology is destroyed. In fact, recent research published in Nature has shown that many native trees species and in particular, introduced European species, will not survive in Australia and most probably, much of New Zealand.

The scale of vegetation planting and ecosystem redevelopment will need to be massive: Professor Deanna D’Alessandro from the University of Sydney has suggested that an area the size of NSW - around 800,000 kilometre² - could well be needed for Australia alone. Ironically, that would start to get us back to pre-European settlement forest cover levels.

So what can we do? A lot. Here’s some initial recommendations: • Expand support for research into tree, woodland, grassland and marine species that will have the best chance of surviving projected future climatic conditions. Different settings will need different species and once identified, these will need mass propagation which in turn will allow an increased rate of replacement plantings

• Identify unusedland parcels and formal and informal parks in urban areas that are of a sufficient size and condition, and with a capacity to be acquired, serviced and managed in order to (re-)establish sustainable ecosystems. As well as larger urban landholdings, these could include far cheaper rural land parcels, marginal and abandoned farmlands and crown reserves. As part of the redevelopment process it would be useful to review the capacity to reduce the amount of mown and manicured grassed land that is devoted to, for example, informal parks, playing fields, golf courses and race tracks. One synthetic playing field can replace four or more grassed fields and this could well free up thousands of hectares of land for revegetation, particularly in former low-lying areas and coastal wetlands. Most rounds of golf are of 9 holes and one 18 hole course can support two nine hole courses. Are all the existing courses needed? The centre of race tracks could readily be used for woodlands and wetlands. And coastal wetlands must be restored: mangroves have one of the highest CO2 sequestration rates of all plants and native grasslands have similar capacities • Implement regulations that place severe limitations on the capacity of new residential developments and inner urban higher density renewal projects to remove climate changerelevant vegetation. Redesigning a building is a simple process compared with establishing a 50 year old tree!

• Implement a net zero offsets policy for any vegetation slated for removal as part of a development. This would entail measuring the amount of greenhouse gases sequestration and capacity of the vegetation and, where the assessment is positive, requiring a development to be revised to protect the vegetation or imposing a meaningful system of offsets. These offsets would require that any vegetation that is removed is replaced by a scientifically determined number (and type) of appropriate vegetation species that match the amount of climate change gases sequestration of the removed vegetation at the date of removal. Planting replacement trees that will take 30 years to match the role of those removed is simply not sufficient. Replacement plantings would not need to be local and preferably, would occur in any of the designated urban or rural revegetation sites identified across the country

• Increase the level of provision and the size of open space parcels in new residential areas to allow sustainable greenhouse gas abatement plantings. In this process, give a high priority to the retention, protection and expansion of remnant vegetation. In this context, the Victorian National Parks Association has produced an invaluable guidebook, Start with the Grasslands: Design guidelines to support native grasslands in urban areas (Marshall, 2013)

• Introduce a uniform, national ban on the clearing of native vegetation on farmland as the individual states in Australia are decades out of synch on this. As part of this, provide grants and guidance as to how remnant woodlands, grasslands, wetlands and forests can be regenerated and how retained farmland can have its productivity improved, and

• Ban the harvesting of native forests and woodlands for all purposes.

An emerging mangrove area near an industrial site. Review the amount of mown and manicured grassed land that is devoted to playing fi elds.

Action on these recommendations will make a major contribution to addressing climate change. The leisure and recreation industry has justifiably touted its contribution to the health and wellbeing of the community both over past decades and particularly, during the covid pandemic. But it has also been a significant contributor to climate change. It now needs to - and can - play a far stronger role in action that will help avoid the destructive future we presently face. Dr Ken Marriott was Managing Director of the leisure planning consultancy HM Leisure Planning Pty Ltd from 1984 until his retirement in 2016. His book, Community Leisure and Recreation Planning, co-authored with John Tower and Katie McDonald from Victoria University in Melbourne, was published by Routledge early in 2021.