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Offset with terrestrial carbon that builds ecosytem resilience
Degree Celsius, an ecosystem services joint venture between Terrain Natural Resource Management and BIOCARBON Pty Ltd, is charged with value-adding the strategic natural resource management activities of the Wet Tropics community as we sequester carbon while building resilience into the landscape. This strategic, regional initiative - the first of its kind in Australia - pools the biocarbon produced by landholders engaged in NRM activities.
In April this year the 56 Regions that comprise Australia's landscape endorsed the model and agreed to support the initiative. This is the first national co-operative programme ever undertaken and it represents a common purpose across the countryside, a sentiment not dampened by the shelving of the CPRS. Please read our first quarter newsletter for more details of what we have been up to.
From the fabled Daintree rainforests south to Hinchinbrook Island, and extending west into the Atherton Tablelands, the Wet Tropics region includes two World Heritage areas: the rainforests of the Wet Tropics - habitat for 25% of Australia’s plants, 35% of its mammals, 40% of its birds and 60% of its butterflies – and the global wonder that is the Great Barrier Reef.
A global biodiversity hotspot, the Wet Tropics is a region particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The Great Barrier Reef has recently suffered two mass coral bleaching events in the last five years including the worst bleaching even ever recorded in the Great Barrier Reef where 60% to 95% of the reefs in the Marine Park were affected. Scientific modelling suggests a temperature increase for the region of up to 5 degrees Celsius and an increase in extremes from the current average of three days over 35 degree Celsius to 41 days per year by 2070. A sobering thought, considering that a temperature increase of only 1 degree Celsius and rainfall decrease of 10% would reduce highland rainforest environments by almost half with irreversible damage and mass extinctions of flora and fauna. There is a lot to lose. And a lot to save.
Building the systems and methodologies for Regional Aggregation
Degree Celsius is a landscape-scale initiative, that is developing credible offsets and at the same time helping the Wet Tropics community build resilience into a globally significant environment; ensuring that the water that runs into the Great Barrier Reef is clean, that species have room to move as climate change kicks in, and allowing the environment to roll with the climate change punches. Degree Celsius is helping to make ecosystem services including carbon a key regional commodity.
CPRS Shelved
It is unfortunate that the CPRS has been shelved. The Degree Celsius initiative demonstrates how Regional NRM bodies can aggregate multiple landholder efforts across the landscape. A carbon market is essential for this initiative to continue. In the absence of emissions trading scheme we are proposing a voluntary market be established immediately to allow investment into Australia's landscapes while allowing businesses and individuals to offset their emissions in a responsible way.
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