Deriving Multiple Benefits from Carbon Market-Based Savanna Fire Management: An Australian Example

Abstract

Carbon markets afford potentially useful opportunities for supporting socially and environmentally sustainable land management programs but, to date, have been little applied in globally significant fire-prone savanna settings. While fire is intrinsic to regulating the composition, structure and dynamics of savanna systems, in north Australian savannas frequent and extensive late dry season wildfires incur significant environmental, production and social impacts. Here we assess the potential of market-based savanna burning greenhouse gas emissions abatement and allied carbon biosequestration projects to deliver compatible environmental and broader socio-economic benefits in a highly biodiverse north Australian setting.Drawing on extensive regional ecological knowledge of fire regime effects on fire-vulnerable taxa and communities, we compare three fire regime metrics (seasonal fire frequency, proportion of long-unburnt vegetation, fire patch-size distribution) over a 15-year period for three national parks with an indigenously (Aboriginal) owned and managed market-based emissions abatement enterprise. Our assessment indicates improved fire management outcomes under the emissions abatement program, and mostly little change or declining outcomes on the parks. We attribute improved outcomes and putative biodiversity benefits under the abatement program to enhanced strategic management made possible by the market-based mitigation arrangement.For these same sites we estimate quanta of carbon credits that could be delivered under realistic enhanced fire management practice, using currently available and developing accredited Australian savanna burning accounting methods. We conclude that, in appropriate situations, market-based savanna burning activities can provide transformative climate change mitigation, ecosystem health, and community benefits in northern Australia, and, despite significant challenges, potentially in other fire-prone savanna settings.

The contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to ecological restoration

“…Robertson et al ; Mills ; Wehi & Lord ), arguably because of what Murphy () calls the “epistemological authority” of Western, objectivist thinking among restoration and conservation ecologists. For instance, traditional IPLC‐prescribed burning regimes are often dismissed in policy circles (Welch et al ; Mistry et al ), despite increasing evidence that fire management can contribute to wildfire prevention, climate change mitigation, and landscape heterogeneity (Defossé et al ; Russell‐Smith et al ). However, as in other areas of natural resource management (Mistry & Berardi ; Díaz et al ), examples exist where ILK has been applied to increase the effectiveness of restoration activities (e.g.…”

Better biodiversity accounting is needed to prevent bioperversity and maximize co‐benefits from savanna burning

“…Collectively they cover 380,000 km 2 (ca. 20%) of the savanna (Figures c and ), and include some of Australia's most structurally intact and biodiverse landscapes (Russell‐Smith et al., ).…”

“…Increasing the area of unburnt country is widely seen as a key goal for conservation management (Andersen et al., ), but to date savanna burning projects have not achieved this because the economic imperative is to shift the season of burning within an annual fire cycle (Figure ; see also Evans & Russell‐Smith, ; Russell‐Smith et al., ). This is not a directly negative consequence of savanna burning, but rather an example of how savanna burning could be suboptimal for biodiversity that requires longer fire‐free intervals (see below).…”

“…Prescribed fire management early in the dry season (EDS) is the basis of savanna burning for GHG abatement, and so it is often argued that GHG abatement is strongly aligned with biodiversity conservation (Russell‐Smith et al., , ). However, the notion that EDS burning benefits biodiversity is based on assumption rather than robust evidence (Bowman & Legge, ), and it has received little scrutiny.…”

Fire-Driven Decline of Endemic Allosyncarpia Monsoon Rainforests in Northern Australia

“…Fire regimes were dominated by very extensive LDS wildfires [23], with Allosyncarpia forest margins being burnt a mean frequency of 0.2 y −1 , including 0.16 y −1 in the LDS, over the period 1990-2005 [42]. Thereafter, fire regimes in the Warddeken IPA have improved markedly associated with the implementation of a commercial landscape-scale fire management project aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions; for example, in the period 2010-2014 just a third of all fire extent in sandstone areas (annual mean = 0.26 fires y −1 ) occurred as LDS fires [94]. That program has also involved reinstatement of preventative fire management around culturally significant Allosyncarpia forest sites.…”