Australia has 440 million hectares of grasslands – that 4.4 M sq km is larger than Europe’s total area of 3.5 M sq km. We also have 147 million hectares of native forests, 1.8 million hectares of plantations and 4% of the world’s global forest estate. Australia has the world’s sixth largest forest area and the fourth-largest area of forest in nature conservation reserves. We are not short of trees.
Australian forests absorb 940 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, over double our domestic and industrial emissions of 417 million tonnes per annum. Add to that the absorption of CO2 into our massive area of grasslands, crops, soils and continental shelf waters and Australia does more than its fair share of CO2 sequestration (which means our grasslands and forests are starving for more CO2).