This BZE Radio episode was broadcast on Monday 15th May 2017

"One of the common misconceptions is that a lot of the ERF money is for planting trees"  Jess Panegyres The Wilderness Society

A transformation is beginning to get underway in the agricultural land uses sector. And not before time - without a much-needed U-turn, agriculture, especially northern zone export beef production, is set to be the single biggest GHG-emitting sector of Australia's economy over the next 2 decades.

BZE's Vivien Langford talks to two of Australia's foremost landuse experts and a film maker about carbon sinks and the film Cultivating Murder.

Guests:

Prof Brett Bryan - from Deakin University

Gregory Miller - Film Director of Cultivating Murder

Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop - BZE Land Use Report author

We are expecting a lot from the land: to feed us, to feed livestock, to fuel cars and now to draw down carbon. And the carbon is not just from coal-fired power, petrol and gas – the agriculture and land use industries themselves, including the 90% of land clearing conducted for northern rangelands cattle grazing, will be responsible for around half our national annual emissions over the coming two decades!

The Emissions Reduction Fund has cost billions but emissions from the land sector are still rising. Meanwhile climate change is intensifying droughts and floods, reducing rainfall and yields and stressing soils and ecosystems. We will talk about what is sustainable and how we can manage the land to cool the climate.

Given that the key product of that highly emissions-intensive northern sector of Australia’s animal  agriculture industry is bulk ‘manufactured meat’, an export industry operated by multinational corporations, what is clear is that Australia’s more responsible farmers are not the problem, rather, they are the solution. They are the key to transforming landuse so that the land draws down excess  carbon dioxide - and that may even give us a chance to avoid large scale geo-engineering.

But HOW?

Professor Brett Bryan  – Brett is Professor of Global Change, Environment, and Society at Deakin University and was until recently a CSIRO principal research scientist where he was lead author of Land-use and sustainability under intersecting global change and domestic policy scenarios: trajectories for Australia to 2050 2016. We will talk about reforestation with Professor Bryan, whose experience at CSIRO shows how carbon sequestration will play a big part in Australia’s future.

Gregory Miller  – Gregory is the director of the documentary Cultivating Murder. To find out about what’s at stake for some we will talk to Gregory about the story of Glen Turner, who lost his life trying to at least restrain runaway land clearing.

Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop – Gerard is a coauthor of BZE’s Land Use: Agriculture and Forestry – A Discussion Paper report. Gerard will explain BZE’s approach to decadal accounting and land-clearing-specific emissions and solutions. BZE research discovered that on average only 13% of cleared land needs to be revegetated to get to a net zero emissions agricultural sector – as long as the clearing stops.

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This show is dedicated to Adrian Burragubba & Murrawah Johnson who are working on behalf of the Wangan & Jagalingou Traditional Owners Council. They have recently been working with Australian parliamentarians to...