You may have heard the phrase ‘nature positive’ knocking about, but it’s not just a trend – it’s here to stay.
But what does it mean, and how does it relate to carbon credits?
Nature’s Calling for Nature Positive
Nature positive means enhancing the condition of natural ecosystems to reverse environmental challenges like biodiversity loss and deforestation, while addressing climate change.
Becoming nature positive involves a shift from just sustaining our ecosystems to restoring them, ensuring that human activities contribute positively to the health of our planet.
In the race to net zero it’s become increasingly clear that we need to be taking nature-positive actions to meet climate goals.
For carbon farming, this means actively improving biodiversity, soil health, and ecosystem resilience, all while reducing carbon emissions.
Nature Positive vs. Net Zero: What’s the Difference?
While the concepts of nature positive and net zero are closely related, they are not the same.
Net zero refers to balancing the amount of greenhouse gases emitted with the amount removed from the atmosphere.
Nature positive, goes beyond this by focusing on preventing ecological damage and regenerating natural ecosystems.
Carbon farming can play a key role in both goals—helping achieve net zero by capturing carbon, while also supporting nature-positive outcomes through practices that restore biodiversity and soil health.
How Does Nature Positive Affect Landholders
Having a nature positive approach to carbon farming can increase biodiversity, the resilience of local ecosystems and landscape productivity.
Introducing biodiverse trees, shrubs and groundcover species into a farming operation, can boost the abundance and variety of beneficial pollinators and natural pest controllers, resulting in higher yields and fewer expensive inputs.
Also, using trees to stabilise erosion can help with retention of topsoil and improve the quality of waterways.
Increasing soil carbon by cover cropping or planting legumes can boost soil health and production.
With these approaches, carbon farming is not only focused on capturing carbon but also on enhancing biodiversity, water systems, and soil health.
What Are Carbon Credits?
Carbon credits are a financial mechanism for achieving climate goals. Each carbon credit signifies a tonne of CO2 that has been removed from the atmosphere.
Landholders who adopt carbon farming practices can generate these credits by proving that they have successfully captured carbon through Plantation Forestry, Environmental Planting or Soil Carbon projects that meet the requirements of the Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCUs) Scheme.
How Do Carbon Credits Support a Nature Positive Approach?
Traditionally, carbon credits were seen as a tool for mitigating emissions. However, as the market evolves, there is increasing understanding that climate action must consider nature-positive outcomes.
Not all carbon credits are created equal.
For example, planting native trees as part of a carbon farming project doesn’t just reduce CO2—it also creates wildlife habitats and improves soil quality.
Even commercial plantations can contribute towards the nature-positive mission. We’ve worked with Heartwood Plantations to capture carbon while introducing a biodiverse tree species mix, which will attract native wildlife species to their properties.
Carbon projects that go beyond carbon reduction to actively contribute to biodiversity restoration and ecosystem health are in high demand, due to the evolving natural capital market.
The Natural Capital Market
The natural capital market offers a unique opportunity to assign financial value to the environmental co-benefits of carbon projects. By leveraging this market, you will be able to trade ACCUs with a co-benefit premium, recognising the nature-positive approach of your project. Services such as Accounting for Nature condition assessments provide robust, verified measurement of environmental improvements so buyers can be sure that green claims are valid.
Many landholders are now adopting practices that align their carbon farming activities with nature positive goals. This not only increases the value of their carbon credits but also contributes to a wider movement that sees carbon farming as part of the solution to environmental challenges.
Want to get into the carbon credit market? We help Australian landholders create high-integrity carbon credits through our carbon farming services.
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