Australia can restore biodiversity and reduce and remove emissions – all while maintaining a thriving agriculture sector. This report demonstrates that a more deliberate and integrated approach to land-use management is essential, achievable and beneficial.

Australia’s current land-use settings are not designed for the scale of change now underway. Decision-making is fragmented across sectors and jurisdictions, with agricultural, environmental, climate and energy policies often developed in isolation. As change accelerates, this fragmentation risks unintended trade-offs and disorderly transitions for landholders and communities.

Different patterns of change create different economic, cultural, environmental and climate outcomes, and the modelling shows how benefits can be distributed. The findings point to a clear opportunity: a national framework for land-use that brings greater coherence to how Australia plans for change across its landscapes.

Key findings

• Adopting environmental planting across 11.6 million hectares could sequester 109 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon emissions per year by 2050.
• The sensitivity analysis shows that restoring 67% more degraded land could deliver 178 Mt of annual sequestration by 2050 while solving for increasing agricultural demand.
• Adopting new technologies can reduce agricultural emissions by 12.1 Mt per year by 2050, while also improving on-farm yields. 
• Spreading land-use change across regions has the potential to support more balanced restoration and increase the use of mixed land uses like agroforestry.

The report is provided with an inputs and assumptions document.