Benefits through environmental markets
By regrowing native forests, landholders can create on-farm benefits, improve biodiversity, help to restore landscapes, and may earn income from participating in environmental markets that value the regrowing forest (e.g. carbon or biodiversity markets).
Environmental markets that operate in Australia include:
Projects that operate under the ACCU Scheme generate carbon credits while projects that operate under the Nature Repair Market Scheme generate biodiversity certificates.
Benefits through carbon credits
Carbon stored by regrowing native forests may be used to generate carbon credits. Once generated, carbon credits can be sold to private sector companies or other entities who wish to offset their carbon emissions or to meet compliance requirements.
Australian Carbon Credit Units, or ACCUs, are regulated financial products under the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Act 2011 administered by the Clean Energy Regulator. An ACCU is equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.
To earn ACCUs a project must use an approved methodology and be registered with the Clean Energy Regulator. There are approved methods that allow ACCUs to be generated by regrowing native forests.
The Land Restoration Fund in Queensland supports Queensland-based carbon credit projects through periodic funding rounds. To learn more, visit the Land Restoration Fund website.
Carbon stores
Clearing native forests and woodlands to establish grasslands for grazing continues to make a significant contribution to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Queensland is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from this land-use change of all Australian states and territories. Land managers can make a difference to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon stores by regrowing native forests.
Carbon is an element, and the building block of all living things on earth. It is continuously cycled through plants and animals and exchanged with the atmosphere.
As a forest grows the plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it to carbon stored in their leaves, branches and trunks. Forests store carbon in several ‘pools’ including in living plant tissues, dead trees and shrubs, woody debris on the forest floor, and the soil.
Approximately half the dry weight of a living tree is carbon, stored for the life of the tree.
When forests are cut down and burnt or left to decay, the carbon in the trees and woody debris is released partly into the soil and partly back into the atmosphere. Grasses and pastures also take carbon from the atmosphere as they grow but they only store a fraction of the carbon a forest can.
Benefits through biodiversity certificates
A biodiversity certificate can be earned through regrowing native forests. These certificates demonstrate improvements to and/or protection of biodiversity and can be held onto or sold to earn income.
A biodiversity certificate can be generated by undertaking a project in accordance with an approved Nature Repair Market method and the project registered with the Clean Energy Regulator. There are methods available that enable certificates to be earned through regrowing of native forests.
Tools and resources
If you’re interested in further information on being credited for generating biodiversity or carbon benefits on your land, the following tools can help:
- Platform for Land and Nature Repair (PLANR): Geospatial tool designed to support land managers to participate in the Nature Repair Market Scheme. This includes tools to assess greenhouse gas emissions, evaluate the condition of land, track trends in tree and ground cover and estimate the costs of projects. It also provides an indication of carbon abatement opportunities.
- LOOC-C: Developed by CSIRO, this tool helps land managers assess carbon abatement options through revegetation, identify co-benefits, and find pathways for starting a carbon farming project.
- Full Carbon Accounting Model (FullCAM): More specific information on a property's carbon abatement potential through vegetation management can be accessed through FullCAM which provides accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from land-based activities in Australia. This model is more detailed than the above two tools and is the basis for many carbon abatement calculations under the ACCU scheme.