Innovatia

biomass will set Australia up as the super- power of the low-carbon world economy. Size, scope, opportunity The unusually large endowment of land and woodlands relative to population gives Australia immense advantages in the production of biomass, as well as in the capture of carbon in the landscape. Re- cent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have ele- vated the importance of carbon capture in the landscape. It is estimated that natural climate solutions can provide 37 per cent of cost-effective reduction in global car- bon emissions for a two-in-three chance of holding warming below 2°C. These reports indicate that native forest restoration could sequester up to 480 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in terrestrial ecosystems – suffi- cient to meet the negative emissions needs of many 1.5°C scenarios. However, despite the immense poten- tial for carbon sequestration across the Australian landscape, we still can’t speak definitively on the size of the opportunity as Australian research efforts and funding over the past decade have not matched the economic and environmental importance of the subject. Counting carbon Climate mitigation in the land sector re- quires comprehensive carbon accounting. As per the Paris Agreement and subse- quent rulebook, adopted in 2015 and 2018 respectively, all countries are required to report emissions under the same United

Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) framework, applying the latest guidance from the IIPCC, which in- cludes a more comprehensive approach to land-based accounting. “The European farming policy of car- bon farming could be applied and create a new revenue stream for the Australian agriculture industry.” The Paris Agreement raises an expecta- tion that the long-term mitigation goal will be achieved through a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks. Such “natural climate solutions” have become much more prominent in interna- tional discussions, particularly in Europe and North America. My treatment of carbon in the Australian landscape in 2008 and 2011 drew upon pi- oneering work by the CSIRO and the state departments of agriculture, as well as uni- versity research. A CSIRO publication in 2011 highlighted the importance of the op- portunity: “Our soils and forest store large quantities of carbon: somewhere between 100 and 200 times Australia’s current annu- al emissions. We can potentially increase these stores in our rural lands and perhaps store or mitigate enough greenhouse gases to offset up to 20 per cent or more of Aus- tralia’s emissions over the next 40 years.

EARTHING CARBON Plants, vegetation, and soils take

carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, convert it into energy and store it as biomass. Increasing biomass to reduce atmospheric levels of C02 is known as carbon sequestration. Australia can make an exceptional contribution to climate action by creating natural systems to store more carbon in soils, pastures, woodland forests and biodiverse plantations, selling the offset carbon to other nations to meet their Paris Agreement targets. By Ross Garnaut I t is now clear to the international communi- ty that changes in land use and agriculture will be critical to avoiding the high costs of climate change. If we move too slowly and overshoot the Paris targets, soil- and plant- based sequestration will be the main avenue to achieving negative emissions. The changes are also essential for global development, improving human health and maintaining a stable global ecology. There will

be one agricultural and land use transforma- tion to serve these four great purposes. To capitalise on this opportunity, Australia will need systematic incentives for reducing emissions in agriculture and land. We will also need to restore declining national strengths in research and education on agricultural, pas- toral, forestry and related industrial activities. Alongside our industrial opportunity in renew- able energy, our strength in growing and using

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