GreenPlan.co.nz
Title
Environmental socially responsible investing - Greenplan Forestry Investments
Description
In the late 1980s John, who had been a farmer, farm consultant and registered public valuer for the previous 30 years, was thinking about selling his King Country farm. His daughter, Melanie, and her husband Bruce Maunsell returned to New Zealand from Turkey where they had been living for a couple of years.
Melanie asked her father about planting trees on his farm. She and Bruce had experienced first hand the results of long term deforestation in countries they had visited overseas. They had developed a strong conviction that the world really was going to have trouble supplying itself with wood in the future, and could see that New Zealand was going to be one of the few places in the world with the ability to produce timber efficiently.
However the main barrier to Melanie’s request was the possibility of the family farm being sold, and the trees going with it. So Melanie explained the problem to a lawyer friend, Simon McArley. Simon explained the concept of Forest Rights, which gives forest owners title to their trees, irrespective of who owns the land.
