Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship - Carbon + Biodiversity Pilot

Overview

The Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship’s Carbon + Biodiversity Pilot (the C+B Pilot) is a component of the Australian Government’s Agriculture Stewardship Package. The package will create new market-based mechanisms that reward farmers for improving environmental outcomes on agricultural land.  The C+B Pilot is trialling arrangements to reward farmers for improving on-farm biodiversity together with carbon projects under the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF). The pilot is initially being run in six Natural Resource Management (NRM) regions: •  Burnett-Mary, Queensland; •  Central West, New South Wales; •  North Central in Victoria; •  NRM North in Tasmania; •  Eyre Peninsula in South Australia;   •  South West in Western Australia. The C+B Pilot will support biodiverse environmental planting projects in agricultural areas. Participants who establish and maintain plantings in accordance with the C+B planting protocol will be eligible to receive payments for biodiversity. They will also potentially be able to receive Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) for the carbon sequestered in the plantings under the Australian Government’s Emissions reduction Fund (ERF) that can be sold to the Australian Government or other buyers.