Our new analysis suggests the vast majority of carbon credits granted for regrowing native forests either has not occurred, or would have occurred anyway.
Industry seeks to capitalize on regenerative agriculture, but standards that focus only on carbon or other select environmental metrics will undermine its transformative potential
The key to unlocking the benefits of new agricultural technologies is to develop food systems where the waste products from one step become valuable inputs in another.
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The world is facing one of the century’s biggest challenges: How to nutritiously feed the growing population, address climate change and not destroy the ecosystems on which we all depend for life.
We all need to eat. Experts imagine how the next agricultural revolution can feed us while fighting climate change and habitat destruction, instead of accelerating it.
Queensland’s new land-clearing laws are a huge missed opportunity.
The carbon farming initiative gives pig farmers the opportunity to earn carbon credits for reducing methane emissions from manure. The proposed change to this government policy may stall, or even end, this market.
Alan Skerman/AAP
Proposed changes to the government’s climate change policies may stall, or even close down, the market for ‘carbon farmers’ to profit from reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
Farming land in New South Wales.
from www.shutterstock.com
Growing population, growing demand for food, climate change: Australia’s rural lands are facing a number of pressures. So how can we sustainably use them in the future?
Australia will struggle to make real emissions reductions without making structural change away from coal in the energy sector.
Daniel L Smith / Shutterstock.com
The GFC killed off Australia’s timber plantation boom, leaving behind a million hectares of timber. But by recognising the carbon value in these trees, a new industry could grow in place of the old.
The latest climate talks in Bonn, Germany, unexpectedly agreed to a mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation.
CIFOR/Flickr
The mid year Bonn negotiations for the proposed new global agreement to tackle climate change have just concluded. They will be finalised at the end of the year in Paris. What progress is being made? What are the challenging issues that may end up being a focus of negotiations in Paris? What does the roadmap from here look like?
Growth industry: forestry will account for much of the carbon reductions under the first round of Emissions Reduction Fund contracts.
CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons
James Whitmore, The Conversation; Michael Hopkin, The Conversation, and Emil Jeyaratnam, The Conversation
The first round of contracts for Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund have been awarded, at an average price of just under A$14 a tonne. How do the numbers stack up, and what projects are the big winners?
Mangroves are still be cleared for aquaculture expansion. Since 1989, 6600 hectares of Tanjung Panjang Nature Reserve’s original 13,300 ha of mangroves have been converted.
Iona Soulsby
Mangroves, hectare for hectare, store more carbon than any other forests. But they are also among the most threatened. New projects in Indonesia show how mangroves might be restored.
Koalas are one of the threatened species that could benefit from carbon farming.
christopher charles/Flickr
Chief Executive Officer, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; Professorial Fellow, Fenner School for the Environment and Society, Australian National University