This week Australia hosted the world’s first Global Nature Positive Summit in Sydney. Five years ago, Climateworks Centre co-hosted the first Australian Natural Capital Summit, which developed the first Natural Capital Roadmap for Australia. 

The Global Nature Positive Summit is a sign of significant progress that the Australian Government has now hosted over 1,000 international and local practitioners and leaders from business and governments on this topic.

There are new global frameworks and local policies and businesses that were not in existence five years ago.

There is still so much more to do, of course, and the energetic buzz at the Summit is an encouraging sign that the work can be done.

I attended and presented alongside some of the world’s leading voices on nature, biodiversity and climate finance. 

My focus there was how we integrate nature into net zero programs and plans, and normalise nature information to become an ordinary part of government and doing business. 

To limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as Climateworks’ pathways suggest, Australia must sequester approximately three to nine times worth of Australia’s current annual emissions to 2050 using land-based solutions.

When my colleagues applied the global framework of Planetary Boundaries to Australia, we found that Australia has transgressed national-scale limits in three of the five boundaries measured. 

So, it is obvious that we have to accelerate action on both net zero and nature positive simultaneously. And we are progressing the tools to do so.

Australia is more equipped than many realise to tackle these challenges 

The Land Use Trade-Offs Model V.2 

My colleagues have worked for years to develop what is now a world-leading model, fondly known as LUTO2 – Land Use Trade-Offs – developed through a collaboration between Deakin University and Climateworks with research contributions from CSIRO. 

While most in the field are familiar with modelling scenarios and pathways for decarbonisation, integrating nature adds complexity. 

The challenge is to bring a spatial dimension alongside net zero to simultaneously solve for emissions plus many other variables like food production, biodiversity and climate conditions that are shifting under climate change.

LUTO2 helps Australia navigate these trade-offs and achieve synergies between nature, climate and agriculture. 

Climateworks’ Liam Walsh and Jo Sanson demonstrated this model at the Summit – and the early findings show the answer is yes, we can achieve these goals in Australia.

The task now is to create the policy frameworks and shared information for this to be managed well.

Natural Capital Measurement Catalogue

As well as focusing on national-scale or catchment-scale decision-making, we are also focused on business-scale and property-scale decision-making. 

Understanding and measuring the value of nature is a foundational step towards making better decisions to protect and restore it in the ordinary course of business. 

Natural capital is the value of everything that comes from nature – and in Australia, roughly half ($896 billion) of the nation’s GDP is dependent on nature. 

Until now, there has been no agreed way to measure natural capital – Climateworks has been working to fill that gap in Australia for the past five years. 

The Natural Capital Measurement Catalogue was developed under the guidance of a technical reference panel of experts and an advisory group comprising more than 50 organisations – all with an interest and expertise in measuring and improving natural capital. 

This open-source resource, developed by Climateworks, supports consistent measurement of natural capital, outlining what to measure and how to measure it and providing publicly available data sources for the majority of metrics. 

The Catalogue includes metrics that can help those that own or manage land (farmers, mining companies or governments) to understand the size, condition and benefits of their natural assets.

It can also help all organisations better measure how their activities impact, or depend on, nature.  

Importantly, it also maps all the publicly available datasets that match the metrics – and so far, around 90 of the approx.160 metrics have a public data source available.

This provides a valuable starting point for natural capital measurement and for highlighting where more investment in data is useful.

Australia is well-positioned to adopt an integrated approach to climate and nature

New policy frameworks increasingly align with net zero goals.

Progress is being made with Australia’s sustainable finance roadmap, and mandatory climate disclosures are coming into effect next year.

These embed net zero targets into the annual financial reports of companies and investors. 

There is convergence on what ‘good’ looks like for climate, and nature is not far behind.

Corporate leaders globally are already engaging with the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, and global alignment on the metrics for nature positive is underway.

Australia is seeing progress with forthcoming national sector plans, 2030 biodiversity targets and a proposed traffic light system for regional planning to help distinguish areas for development from those with high environmental value. 

It won’t be long until geospatial data on nature becomes a more mainstream part of planning and investment information systems.

Some say ‘climate now, nature next’ – but it is too late to think about this sequentially 

It is clear that the nature movement is learning from the climate playbook, and similar reporting requirements will soon exist for corporates. 

The task now is to embed nature into the net zero emissions policies and strategies of businesses and governments.

The synergies are clear, and so are the benefits of fast-tracking the alignment of global nature positive goals with clear guidance and data, and transition support, just as we saw in the early days of renewable energy and decarbonisation pathways. 

Countries and the private sector can build on existing policy architecture and corporate guidance already adapted for net zero.

Though the complexity of this may seem daunting, action is already underway to integrate nature and net zero.