The biodiversity scoop for 2024
It’s been a big year for biodiversity and natural capital, and at Woop Woop we’re excited about how far action on nature has come.
In 2023, great progress was made against two of the most formidable and long-standing barriers to scaling restoration – valuing nature, and financing restoration. There’s a long way to go, but it’s an exciting work in progress.
But to avoid catastrophic biodiversity loss, we need to plant out 4.9 million hectares of private land in the next six planting seasons[1], and right now we (generously) estimate we’re only planting around 50,000 hectares per annum. We’ve got a big scaling problem ahead of us.
So in 2024 we must look beyond conservation finance and urgently bring our attention to another crucial challenge- the technical and practical aspects of scaling up on-ground restoration efforts whilst maintaining, and enhancing integrity.
These are the areas we’ll be keeping a watchful eye on as we scale action for nature in 2024.
1. Rapid adoption of smart technology and Artificial Intelligence
Compared with agriculture, the restoration sector has historically been slow to uptake new technologies, but we're excited that the challenge for 2024 will be to keep abreast of new technologies and their potential.
We’re particularly excited about the opportunities to bring existing and enhanced smart technology across from the agriculture and forestry sectors to help scale practical activities. Technology such as optical sorting for native seeds, cleaner weed removal technology, automated planters and real-time monitoring of soil moisture and plant growth show great potential for scaling cost-effective and high integrity restoration.
We're also predicting (and seeing the early emergence of) big changes in the way technology and big data sets support the planning, monitoring, reporting and finance of biodiversity projects, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
2. Cultural shifts in how we perceive and value nature, led by Indigenous Peoples and local communities
Enabling large scale action on nature will require a transformational change in people’s perception of nature and their associated behaviours. An encouraging study from the United States[2] found that people’s relationship with nature has become more inclusive and less domineering since 2004, but wholesale behavioural change will be required to enable 4.9 million hectares to be planted within six years.
Learning from the world’s Indigenous Peoples is essential to enable this shift, and ensuring that practical action involves local communities will result in better long term outcomes for nature-perception and in turn, biodiversity. In Australia, the (devastating) referendum outcome has galvanised more people to amplify the voice of Australia’s First Nations people, which we believe will rapidly drive favourable cultural shifts in our understanding of, and relationship with, Australian biodiversity in 2024.
3. Farmer centric approaches to overcome land access constraints
Land access is a critical bottleneck in scaling up nature-based solutions. In contrast to many corporates who are purchasing land to deliver carbon offsets, farmers are expressing reluctance to participate in nature-based markets. In a study on soil carbon sequestration[3] for example, farmers described the delivery of carbon credits as convoluted, burdensome and unpredictable.
As we scale action on nature, it’s essential that in 2024 we focus on developing nature-based solutions that not only offer financial incentives for farmers, but help to solve their day-to-day problems, too.
4. Overcoming regulatory complexity
Boring perhaps, but essential. Streamlining regulatory processes related to land use, conservation and particularly climate adaptation is imperative because currently it can add months or years onto a project timeline, or prevent projects progressing at all. Clear guidelines, standardized procedures, responsible agencies and a collaborative approach among stakeholders will facilitate smoother implementation of nature-based projects and enable rapid scale. We expect (=hope) for big regulatory changes associated with the introduction of new nature-based markets in 2024.
5. A dire shortage of technical and practical knowledge, and new skill sets required
Knowing what actions to take on the ground to benefit biodiversity is the final, but enormous piece of the puzzle. We must bust open the myth that tree planting is restoration – it’s only one part of a very complex solution, and high quality restoration requires expertise and importantly, time. Technical and practical implementation of nature-based solutions requires not only horticultural knowledge, but a nuanced understanding of the ecology and evolution of species, communities and ecosystems and the dynamic interplay between human activities and the environment.
But there is a dire shortage of ecologists and people who know how to take practical action now, and so in 2024 we must focus on training the next generation, enabling these restoration practioners to have their greatest impact, and combining their knowledge with new skill sets, such as finance, social science, technology and agronomy so that we can rapidly scale action for nature.
Conclusion
As we witness the transformative power of conservation finance for unlocking restoration opportunities, it is crucial the restoration sector now tackles the complex challenges associated with developing and delivering practical nature-based solutions at scale. By tackling these remaining barriers head-on and with new approaches and ways of thinking, we can ensure that the momentum gained in conservation finance translates into large scale on-ground action for nature.
[1] Bonnie Mappin, Adrian Ward, Lesley Hughes, James E. M. Watson, Peter Cosier, Hugh P. Possingham et al. (2021). The costs and benefits of restoring a continent’s terrestrial ecosystems. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14008
[2] Manfredo, M.J., Teel, T.L., Berl, R.E.W. et al. Social value shift in favour of biodiversity conservation in the United States. Nat Sustain 4, 323–330 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00655-6
[3] Clare Barbato and Aaron Strong (2023). Farmer perspectives on carbon markets incentivizing agricultural soil carbon sequestration. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-023-00055-4
