LEADING Australian scientist Peter Cosier says the challenge for Australian farmers is to capitalise on the terrestrial carbon economy.
Speaking at the National Landcare Forum in Adelaide last week, he said farmers needed to drive investments to improve the health of their agricultural soils, protect areas of high-conservation significance and repair degraded landscapes.
Mr Cosier, a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, said the carbon economy scheme had been designed so farmers could be paid to offset emissions from industrial polluters.
"Industrial polluters as part of their action on climate change can pay farmers to restore carbon in their landscape, in both vegetation and soils," he said.
But Mr Cosier said there needed to be regulatory controls on the terrestrial carbon market, so that multiple economic and environmental benefits could be realised.
This would help protect fresh water resources, biodiversity and agricultural land.
Mr Cosier said Landcare and its regional NRM bodies needed to have a greater role in government policy and more resources for land-use planning.
"We have plenty of science and plenty of information to provide farmers with," he said. "I believe the role of government is to provide funds to employ Landcare project people so they can communicate this great science to farmers themselves."
Mr Cosier also said that too much of taxpayers' money was being paid to bureaucrats in capital cities. More research needed to get back to people on farms.
He said the Federal Government's flagship environment program, 'Caring for Our Country', had a total annual budget of $400 million, which worked out to be less than $2 a hectare.
"By contrast, the cost of repairing the damage to Australia's natural resources is estimated to be more than $80 billion," he said.
Mr Cosier said if Australia was to capture just 15 per cent of this biophysical capacity, it would offset the equivalent of 25pc of Australia's annual greenhouse emissions every year for the next 40 years.
"This represents a gross investment potential of terrestrial carbon in Australia of between $3b and $6b per annum – an order of magnitude of more economic firepower than in the entire 'Caring for our Country' program.
"That's a potential investment of between $50m and $100m, on average, for every NRM region across Australia, every year for the next 40 years.
"Not enough resources are going towards paying professional staff in the bush to help farmers.
"We need money to employ young scientists so they can go out on farm and provide farmers with scientific information about how they can better manage their farms and how their farms can better contribute to overall landscape health.
"That can't be done out of Canberra or the capital cities, it has to be a one-on-one thing between a Landcare officer and a farmer."
Mr Cosier says environmental accounts need to be set up in conjunction with economic accounts.
"Our economic accounts were built effectively after the Great Depression and we need to now set up a series of environmental accounts so that environmental accounts will have an equal footing with our economic accounts," he said. "When we get both together that means we can start directing these investments to produce the most optimum outcomes economically and environmentally.
"We are at a turning point in landscape conservation. We can withdraw resources and see one of the great movements in Australia's history crumble or we can take advantage of the new terrestrial carbon economy which will happen in Australia to address climate change."
Email a friend