Unlocking Natural Capital Revenue with CarbonCrop

The East Coast's highly erodible landscapes are among the most vulnerable globally and the sheep and beef sector faces ongoing pressure from extreme weather events and climate related risks. This project explores how Nature-based Solutions (NbS), including the restoration of marginal land and strategic planting can strengthen landscape resilience while supporting biodiversity, climate adaptation and long term environmental outcomes.

Despite their proven ecological value, NbS are often disadvantaged in current policy and carbon accounting frameworks, which tend to favour exotic forestry due to stronger short term economic returns. This creates opportunity costs for farmers choosing native restoration and limits recognition of smaller but important carbon sequestering features such as shelterbelts, wetlands and riparian plantings. 

The demonstration project responds to this gap by testing how emerging tools such as CarbonCrop and AI enabled land mapping can better quantify on farm vegetation and support clearer decision making around land use tradeoffs. It will focus on identifying high risk, high opportunity areas within Karamu River Catchment Collective and assess farmer willingness to adopt NbS as a practical pathway to improve landscape resilience while improving on-farm profitability.