Embracing environmental accounting
In 2020 Natural Decisions has been pleased to work with Kilter Rural in support of their work to develop environmental accounts for their properties in northern Victoria. We have a long and productive collaboration with Kilter Rural, which extends back to 2004 when they first established their FFL Winlaton farmlands near Lake Boga.
On 9000 ha of land between Kerang and Swan Hill they are managing about 50% of the landscape to deliver environmental protection outcomes in a fully integrated way with the remaining 50% of land managed for a diversity of high value agricultural enterprises such as tomatoes, stone fruits and organic cereals.
A focus of their pioneering approach to integrating profitable farming with landscape restoration is to scientifically demonstrate that their management contributes to tangible land, water and biodiversity improvements – this is where environmental accounting has a crucial role to play.
Environmental-Economic Accounting (EEA) is a framework for organising statistical information to help decision-makers better understand how the economy and the environment interact.
The first step in the journey for Kilter has been the development of a robust and transferable environmental accounting method for native vegetation. In an important and exciting development this native vegetation method has recently been accredited by Accounting for Nature®. The method has been successfully tailored for application on regenerating farm landscapes with a long history of vegetation loss, salinization and soil decline. The pathway to landscape recovery in these environments requires a long-term vision, an ability to understand and respond to natural processes – often driven by significant episodic events (such as flooding and drought) and patience!
Kilter is actively developing parallel approaches to soils and fauna (birds) and we are looking forward to supporting these efforts during 2021.
Riverine Chenopod Woodland on Kilter property near Lake Charm
Posted 22 December 2020 in News
