Changing ownership and management of state forest plantations - Australia [DRAFT]

Australia presents an informative case study for experiences of State and private plantation forestry development. Its relative lack of native conifers stimulated development of a softwood plantation estate by the State more than a century ago, and plantation forests1 now supply the majority of Australia’s industrial wood. Its federal structure and political and geographic diversity allowed a diversity of institutional arrangements to evolve. While most Australian states maintain a dominant role in the plantation growing sector, private landowners, investors and enterprises have become increasingly important as the roles of plantations have increased and diversified. Australia demonstrates a spectrum of privatisation, from the corporatisation and privatisation of State-owned
plantations to the encouragement of private sector investment and public-private partnerships in a variety of forms of plantations. Recent public policy has restated its earlier emphasis on plantations as a vehicle for regional economic development, and identified plantations as a means of ameliorating environmental degradation outside traditional plantation-growing regions.