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Soil-based carbon farming has been identified in previous research as a win-win for farm productivity and the mitigation of climate change through carbon sequestration. However, it faces numerous barriers to adoption, including low carbon prices, high transaction costs, information barriers and high uncertainty around future outcomes, markets and policy conditions. Collaboration between landholders and other stakeholders has been proposed as a potential means of overcoming some of these barriers, while maximising the benefits of soil-based carbon farming. In this article, we present the results of a two-stage process investigating collaborative soil-based carbon farming in Australia, involving national-scale key informant interviews and a regional-scale Participatory Rural Appraisal. Fifty-three interviews were undertaken with key carbon farming stakeholders, including landholders, landholder groups, carbon service providers, government, researchers and the financial sector. Collaboration was seen to offer the greatest advantages in relation to knowledge-sharing and social support, followed by its potential to increase carbon income through enhanced bargaining power and the optimisation of co-benefits. The advantages of collaboration were less clear in relation to reducing costs or maximising farm productivity and collaboration also presents new challenges around risk and complexity. Under current conditions, informal collaboration models were seen to offer the best balance between the benefits and risks, with existing cooperatives also well-placed to diversify into carbon. Alternative conditions in the future or in other locations would be needed to facilitate models involving joint projects, pooled credits, shared land management and/or the creation of new carbon-specific cooperatives. • Soil-based carbon farming benefits both carbon sequestration and farm productivity. • Advantages of collaboration are greatest for knowledge-sharing and social support. • Collaboration less beneficial in relation to cost-reduction and farm productivity. • Informal models for collaboration preferred by study participants. • Existing agricultural cooperatives are well-placed to diversify into carbon farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Pricing greenhouse gas emissions is a burgeoning and possibly lucrative financial means for climate change mitigation. Emissions pricing is being used to fund emissions-abatement technologies and to modify land management to improve carbon sequestration and retention. Here we discuss the principal land-management options under existing and realistic future emissions-price legislation in Australia, and examine them with respect to their anticipated direct and indirect effects on biodiversity. The main ways in which emissions price-driven changes to land management can affect biodiversity are through policies and practices for (1) environmental plantings for carbon sequestration, (2) native regrowth, (3) fire management, (4) forestry, (5) agricultural practices (including cropping and grazing), and (6) feral animal control. While most land-management options available to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions offer clear advantages to increase the viability of native biodiversity, we describe several caveats regarding potentially negative outcomes, and outline components that need to be considered if biodiversity is also to benefit from the new carbon economy. Carbon plantings will only have real biodiversity value if they comprise appropriate native tree species and provide suitable habitats and resources for valued fauna. Such plantings also risk severely altering local hydrology and reducing water availability. Management of regrowth post-agricultural abandonment requires setting appropriate baselines and allowing for thinning in certain circumstances, and improvements to forestry rotation lengths would likely increase carbon-retention capacity and biodiversity value. Prescribed burning to reduce the frequency of high-intensity wildfires in northern Australia is being used as a tool to increase carbon retention. Fire management in southern Australia is not readily amenable for maximising carbon storage potential, but will become increasingly important for biodiversity conservation as the climate warms. Carbon price-based modifications to agriculture that would benefit biodiversity include reductions in tillage frequency and livestock densities, reductions in fertiliser use, and retention and regeneration of native shrubs; however, anticipated shifts to exotic perennial grass species such as buffel grass and kikuyu could have net negative implications for native biodiversity. Finally, it is unlikely that major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions arising from feral animal control are possible, even though reduced densities of feral herbivores will benefit Australian biodiversity greatly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• The economics of carbon sequestration in South Australia were evaluated. • Results confirm active afforestation is a high-cost abatement option. • Conservative carbon accounting methods further limit incentives for land-use change. • Achievable abatement is likely small relative to emissions at recent carbon price. • Changes to Australian carbon accounting could incentivise more land-use change. Governments globally are developing increasingly ambitious carbon emissions reduction schemes that include significant emissions offset credits for forest-based carbon sequestration. Such strategies can present significant challenges in highly modified and intensively farmed regions where forest land use opportunity and establishment costs are high. This article evaluates the economics of land-use change via active afforestation for local carbon abatement in the Australian state of South Australia, a region with high supply costs representative of long-established temperate farming regions. We found that there is no economically viable abatement below $38 tCO 2 e−1, however up to 154 Mt CO 2 e of abatement could be available up to prices of $50 tCO 2 e−1. Variation in current Australian Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) policy parameters related to permanence and crediting periods were also assessed. Recent ERF contracts involve a 100-year land-use change commitment (permanence period) and a 25-year crediting period where payments for growth in carbon from the land-use change is contracted. We compared outcomes of this arrangement to a scenario with equal 100-year permanence and crediting periods. We found substantial differences in carbon supply at some price points for a 25 rather than a 100-year crediting period. Under ERF parameters the first economically viable revegetation options occur at $42 tCO 2 e−1, however, we found a 69 percent reduction in economically viable supply at a carbon price of $50 tCO 2 e−1. The results highlight the role offset crediting policy can have on dis-incentivising land-use change and the need for landholders to be compensated fully for temporal opportunity costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]