Naked suburbs fail on carbon

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Canberra’s new suburbs are so devoid of trees and green spaces that most will struggle to store even one tonne of carbon a hectare by 2015, according to a new report.

While the leafy, tree-lined streets of older suburbs such as Yarralumla, Griffith and Deakin are estimated to soak up 22tonnes of carbon a hectare, the city’s newer suburbs those built in the last 20 years average only 0.1 tonnes.

However, these older suburbs are earmarked to lose hundreds of street trees as part of an ACT program to overhaul the city’s urban forest.

Despite being marketed as a suburb with purpose-built green credentials, Forde’s trees and grasslands will sequester less than 0.4tonnes of carbon per hectare by 2015.

Bonner will store only 0.0003tonnes, but Aranda will be among the city’s greenest suburbs with an average annual carbon storage rate of 1.8tonnes.

The carbon audit of the ACT’s greenery the first carbon sequestration study of its kind in Australia was carried out by forestry scientists at the Australian National University’s Fenner school of environment.

The ACT Government has played down the study’s findings, with Environment Minister Simon Corbell claiming the report will be used to ”inform future tree planting programs and ecosystem management plans”.

Reaction from ACT Greens spokesman Shane Rattenbury in today’s Canberra Times