Incentivizing sustainable fire management in Australia's northern arid spinifex grasslands

Fire management across Australia's fire-prone 1.2 M km2 northern savannas region has been transformed over the past decade supported by the inception of Australia's national regulated emissions reduction market in 2012. Today, incentivised fire management is undertaken over a quarter of that entire region, providing a range of socio-cultural, environmental, and economic benefits, including for remote Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) communities and enterprises. Building on those advances, here we explore the emissions abatement potential for expanding incentivised fire management opportunities to include a contiguous fire-prone region, extending to monsoonal but annually lower (<600 mm) and more variable rainfall conditions, supporting predominantly shrubby spinifex (Triodia) hummock grasslands characteristic of much of Australia's deserts and semi-arid rangelands. Adapting a standard methodological approach applied previously for assessing savanna emissions parameters, we first describe fire regime and associated climatic attributes for a proposed ∼850,000 km2 lower rainfall (600-350 mm MAR) focal region. Second, based on regional field assessments of seasonal fuel accumulation, combustion, burnt area patchiness, and accountable methane and nitrous oxide Emission Factor parameters, we find that significant emissions abatement is feasible for regional hummock grasslands. This applies specifically for more frequently burnt sites under higher rainfall conditions if substantial early dry season prescribed fire management is undertaken resulting in marked reduction in late dry season wildfires. The proposed Northern Arid Zone (NAZ) focal envelope is substantially under Indigenous land ownership and management, and in addition to reducing emissions impacts associated with recurrent extensive wildfires, development of commercial landscape-scale fire management opportunities would significantly support social, cultural and biodiversity management aspirations as promoted by Indigenous landowners. Combined with existing regulated savanna fire management regions, inclusion of the NAZ under existing legislated abatement methodologies would effectively provide incentivised fire management covering a quarter of Australia's landmass. This could complement an allied (non-carbon) accredited method valuing combined social, cultural and biodiversity outcomes from enhanced fire management of hummock grasslands. Although the management approach has potential application to other international fire-prone savanna grasslands, caution is required to ensure that such practice does not result in irreversible woody encroachment and undesirable habitat change.

Empowering Indigenous natural hazards management in northern Australia

Northern Australia is prone to recurring severe natural hazards, especially frequent cyclones, flooding, and extensive wildfires. The region is sparsely populated (≪ 0.5 persons km^-2), with Indigenous (Aboriginal) residents comprising 14% of the population, and typically the majority in remote regions. Despite national policy committed to addressing emergency management (EM) in vulnerable Indigenous communities, implementation remains unfunded. We synthesise participatory intercultural research conducted over seven years exploring core challenges, opportunities and potential solutions towards developing effective EM partnerships. Similar EM engagement and empowerment issues face First Nations and local communities in many international settings. In search of solutions, we explore developing effective partnership arrangements between EM agencies and culturally diverse Indigenous communities. Observing that government already provides substantial investment in cultural and natural resource management programmes conducted by over 150 Indigenous Ranger Groups (IRGs) nationally, we demonstrate that expansion of IRG roles to incorporate EM community engagement and service delivery can provide multiple cost-effective community and business development benefits for many remote communities.

Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing-Based Approaches Can Help Transform Our Economies

Despite wider recognition of human interdependence with the rest of nature, our economies continue to fail to adequately value ecosystem services. This failure is largely attributed to the economic frameworks and related measures that focus on the production and consumption of marketed goods and services, but do not consider the other essential elements upon which our lives depend. This paper highlights how the Ecosystem Services approach can shift the focus to human wellbeing while remaining within biophysical planetary boundaries. An Ecosystem Services approach applies three fundamental principles of Ecological Economics: sustainable scale, efficient allocation, and fair distribution, which are vital for sustainable economies and societies. We provide case studies, from both a local and national scale, demonstrating how such an approach offers a holistic perspective of understanding what “development” actually means. Transforming our economies to appropriately consider planetary limits, overcome societal addictions, learn from Indigenous and local communities about ways of sustainable living, and realizing the importance of ecosystem services will contribute to developing economies that are resilient, and that enhance sustainable human wellbeing.

How necessary and feasible are reductions of methane emissions from livestock to support stringent temperature goals?

Agriculture is the largest single source of global anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions, with ruminants the dominant contributor. Livestock CH4 emissions are projected to grow another 30% by 2050 under current policies, yet few countries have set targets or are implementing policies to reduce emissions in absolute terms. The reason for this limited ambition may be linked not only to the underpinning role of livestock for nutrition and livelihoods in many countries but also diverging perspectives on the importance of mitigating these emissions, given the short atmospheric lifetime of CH4. Here, we show that in mitigation pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C, which include cost-effective reductions from all emission sources, the contribution of future livestock CH4 emissions to global warming in 2050 is about one-third of that from future net carbon dioxide emissions. Future livestock CH4 emissions, therefore, significantly constrain the remaining carbon budget and the ability to meet stringent temperature limits. We review options to address livestock CH4 emissions through more efficient production, technological advances and demand-side changes, and their interactions with land-based carbon sequestration. We conclude that bringing livestock into mainstream mitigation policies, while recognizing their unique social, cultural and economic roles, would make an important contribution towards reaching the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement and is vital for a limit of 1.5°C. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Rising methane: is warming feeding warming? (part 1)'.

Transforming fire management in northern Australia through successful implementation of savanna burning emissions reductions projects

Savannas are the most fire-prone of Earth's biomes and currently account for most global burned area and associated carbon emissions. In Australia, over recent decades substantial development of savanna burning emissions accounting methods has been undertaken to incentivise more conservative savanna fire management and reduce the extent and severity of late dry season wildfires. Since inception of Australia's formal regulated savanna burning market in 2012, today 25% of the 1.2M km² fire-prone northern savanna region is managed under such arrangements. Although savanna burning projects generate significant emissions reductions and associated financial benefits especially for Indigenous landowners, various biodiversity conservation considerations, including fine-scale management requirements for conservation of fire-vulnerable taxa, remain contentious. For the entire savanna burning region, here we compare outcomes achieved at 'with-project' vs 'non-project' sites over the period 2000-19, with respect to explicit ecologically defined fire regime metrics, and assembled fire history and spatial mapping coverages. We find that there has been little significant fire regime change at non-project sites, whereas, at with-project sites under all land uses, from 2013 there has been significant reduction in late season wildfire, increase in prescribed early season mitigation burning and patchiness metrics, and seasonally variable changes in extent of unburnt (>2, >5 years) habitat. Despite these achievements, it is acknowledged that savanna burning projects do not provide a fire management panacea for a variety of key regional conservation, production, and cultural management issues. Rather, savanna burning projects can provide an effective operational funded framework to assist with delivering various landscape-scale management objectives. With these caveats in mind, significant potential exists for implementing incentivised fire management approaches in other fire-prone international savanna settings.

Nudging the narrative: heading in the 'right direction'

Lack of engagement with rangelands by the general public, politicians and some practitioners has led to policy failure and unsustainable practice. We argue that thinking in terms of cultural reciprocity with land will lead to greater sustainability of rangeland uses. Many grass-roots initiatives are already showing the way by working at the boundary of science, society and decision makers, involving everyone with a stake in the outcome and developing genuine collaboration and acceptance of diverse value systems.

VegMachine.net. online land cover analysis for the Australian rangelands

This paper documents the development and use of the VegMachine.net land cover monitoring tool. From 2002 to 2015, VegMachine® software was used by government agencies, natural resource management (NRM) groups and individual pastoralists in northern Australia to assess and benchmark vegetation cover levels. In 2016 the VegMachine.net website was launched to build a wider user base and assure service continuity. Users can now graph historical (1990–) cover on one or more user defined areas of interest (AOI), produce comprehensive paddock-by-paddock property monitoring reports, and view a range of land cover raster images through the website map panel. In its first 32 months of operation 913 users logged 1604 sessions on the website and more than 1000 of the website’s most comprehensive monitoring reports were distributed to users. Levels of use varied; 26% of users (n = 237) have used the website more than once, and within this group a smaller set of regular users (n = 36) have used the site more than five times, in many cases to provide analyses to multiple clients. We outline four case studies that document the significant impact VegMachine.net has had on users including graziers, government agencies, NRM groups and researchers. We also discuss some possible paths forward that could widen the user base and improve retention of first time users.

The contribution of the pastoral industry to a diversified land sector economy in northern Australia

The paper ‘Emerging opportunities for developing a diversified land sector economy in Australia’s northern savannas’ (Russell-Smith and Sangha 2018: The Rangeland Journal 40, 315–330. doi:10.1071/RJ18005) draws heavily on work by the present authors. We are of the opinion that the use of our data is incomplete, and in some cases incorrect. We conclude that their analysis does not accurately portray the economic performance and contribution of the pastoral sector in northern Australia, nor justify the conclusion that fundamental land sector change is required. The present work details the concerns that we have with the Russell-Smith and Sangha paper.

Beneficial land sector change in far northern Australia is required and possible – a refutation of McLean and Holmes (2019)

In a recent paper we set out a case for extending current and emerging ecosystem services enterprise opportunities to support sustainable land sector development in far northern Australia (Russell-Smith and Sangha 2018: The Rangeland Journal 40, 315–330. doi:10.1071/RJ18005). In that paper we illustrate very significant economic viability and environmental sustainability issues associated with the current dominant land use, the extensive rangeland beef cattle industry. Our beef enterprise economic assessments drew heavily on reports by Ian McLean, Phil Holmes and colleagues, as well as various other authoritative studies. In a detailed response, McLean and Holmes outline their concerns that, in various instances, we misrepresented their data and that our assessment ‘does not accurately portray the economic performance and contribution of the pastoral sector in northern Australia, nor justify the conclusion that fundamental land sector change is required’ (Comment by McLean and Holmes 2019: The Rangeland Journal, 41, 157–160. doi:10.1071/RJ18098). We acknowledge the singular contributions of those authors for our understanding of the enterprise characteristics and challenges faced by northern beef producers, but further, we: (a) for context, demonstrate the magnitude of the economic and sustainability challenges faced by the majority of northern beef producers as described in a range of pertinent studies including their own; (b) provide a detailed refutation of all eight of their listed concerns; and (c) conclude that available evidence does in fact strongly support the need for exploring diversified enterprise opportunities towards developing a sustainable and inclusive far northern land sector.

Developing the north: learning from the past to guide future plans and policies

The development of northern Australia has been a policy ambition for over a century and the desire to do so continues unabated. Attempts to develop the north, especially for more intensive forms of agriculture are not new. In this paper we explore past agricultural developments, including some that persist today and those that have failed, to determine critical factors in success or failure. This was done with the aim of identifying where most effort should focus in supporting contemporary agricultural developments. Although climatic and environmental constraints, including pests and diseases, remain a challenge for agricultural development in these largely tropical rangelands, it is mainly factors associated with finances and investment planning, land tenure and property rights, management, skills, and supply chains, which provide the critical challenges. In particular, the desire to scale-up too rapidly and the associated failure to invest sufficient time and resources in management to learn how to develop appropriate farming systems that are sustainable and economically viable is a recurrent theme through the case study assessment. Scaling up in a more measured way, with a staged approach to the investment in physical capital, should better allow for the inevitable set-backs and the unexpected costs in developing tropical rangelands for agriculture. There are two notable differences from the historical mandate to develop. First is the acknowledgement that development should not disadvantage Indigenous people, that Indigenous people have strong interests and rights in land and water resources and that these resources will be deployed to further Indigenous economic development. Second, assessing environmental impacts of more intensive development is more rigorous than in the past and the resources and timeframes required for these processes are often underestimated.