How investing in nature helps the climate
I squint against the late October sun as I step out of the ute and survey the landscape. I soak it all in. This is a landscape in transition.
Below, the shrub-dotted grasslands of Wolgalu Country roll away to meet a cloudless sky. Not long ago, this was a sheep-grazing property. Over generations of tree-clearing and grazing, species endemic to the region have fragmented and dwindled with their habitat. Every endangered plant that can be found in this special area is precious and needs to be managed carefully to ensure the species is protected for future generations.
That’s why we’re here: to see the plan to restore a significant area of critically endangered Monaro Tablelands Cool Temperate Grassy Woodland in action. It’s a different kind of day for an investment manager, but then again, this is a different kind of investment. Designed to improve biodiversity outcomes while sequestering carbon for at least 100 years, Caddigat Road is an example of what impact investing can achieve: positive outcomes for both the planet, and for your super balance.
I’ve joined Conscious Investment Management (CIM) to visit Caddigat Road, a biodiverse Environmental Planting project registered with the Clean Energy Regulator to generate Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs). We’re on Wolgalu Country in the Snowy Monaro region in New South Wales, about 2.5 hours southwest of Canberra.
Caddigat Road is an investment within CIM’s Impact Fund, which members in Future Super’s sustainable investment options have exposure to. As Future Group’s Impact and Unlisted Investment Manager and part of the team responsible for day-to-day management of Future Super’s portfolio, I’m here to see the project’s progress firsthand.
Caddigat Road was purchased in May 2024 by environmental nonprofit Greening Australia with innovative debt financing from CIM. Greening Australia specialises in reforestation as a nature-based solution to climate change and biodiversity loss. This makes them the ideal partner for this project and other natural capital investments which CIM manages through its Impact Fund.
Natural capital in action
Our trip started at Greening Australia’s nursery in Canberra, where we learned how the team is helping to safeguard endangered species, including through tightly regulated wild seed collection, propagation at Greening Australia’s nurseries, and careful cross-pollination to ensure future generations will retain genetic diversity and be more resilient to hotter, drier conditions.
Local experts have been increasingly concerned about the alarming rate of nature loss in the unique Snowy Monaro region, so when the opportunity to acquire a 755-hectare property came up, Greening Australia and CIM leapt into action.
Greening Australia have planted close to 150,000 native trees and bushes here. The mix of local species has been carefully chosen by Greening Australia ecologists to restore the region’s unique and endangered Monaro Grassy Woodland ecosystem. The selected species aim to restore the landscape to what it may have looked like pre-colonisation, factoring in climate resilience and contribution to under-, mid- and over-storey canopy covers.
And today, we’re getting to plant some. I try to do the maths… 150,000 within a three-week planting window? That’s got to be almost 10,000 trees a day. I don’t think I’m quite going to manage that, even with one of the manual diggers the experts use, which can plant a sapling every 40 seconds or something absurd like that. Planting even a few plants feels like more of a gift to me, a tangible connection to the enormous effort happening here to stop biodiversity loss and mitigate climate change.
While they show us what to do, the Greening Australia team tell us how much prep is needed before planting can even happen. After a century of sheep grazing, the soil is compacted, so water runs off it. Rip lines have turned over the soil in furrows that now follow the contours of the hills, breaking up the hard soil so rain has a chance to seep in and rebuild the water table.
This makes my job much easier as I work with the group to drop in a few saplings, pat down the soil and pop on a guard to protect the young leaves from hopeful wallabies and other grazers.
The idea – and the reason this property was chosen to rewild – is that these new trees will grow to provide habitat, connecting the property’s remnant pockets of endangered grassy woodlands all the way down to the Murrumbidgee River that curves limpidly through these foothills on its way to meet the Murray.
Connection to Country
We were lucky to be joined by Aunty Alice, a Wolgalu and Wiradjuri Elder, on our visit to Caddigat Road. Aunty Alice is warm, funny, and generous with her knowledge. She spoke about the Wolgalu People’s connection to this Country and their work with Greening Australia to restore the area’s cultural landscape as a critical part of this environmental planting project.
The Wolgalu custodians are drawing on traditional knowledge to help the regeneration project succeed. “It's a direct colonial legacy that these ecosystems are threatened,” Aunty Alice told us. The landscape is culturally significant to the Wolgalu People, who have been locked out of Country during its use as pastoral land.
As we move between different areas of the property, Aunty Alice talks to us about this history of dispossession, and the vital cultural work that Wolgalu People have resumed now they can visit Country again. Having access to Country allows Wolgalu Elders to bring young people back on Country to talk and share stories – one of many ways this project seeks to embed both environmental and social justice outcomes as it progresses.
There’s a long history here, and a lot of knowledge being poured into the regeneration project.
“We're planting for ten, twenty generations from now,” Aunty Alice tells us. “We might not see it, but at the end of the day, we’re accountable. They’ll ask, well what did you do?”
Bringing nature back
Even before stepping out of the car, we’d watched an echidna waddling along the track. As we spoke to Aunty Alice and other Wolgalu women, a little raven flew above, drawing attention to its huge nest in the gum tree watching over us. Later, as we began dropping our saplings into rip lines, a massive wedge-tailed eagle soared overhead, probably eyeing the adorable little cotton-ball plover chicks scurrying around under the anxious eyes of their parents.
Wedge-tailed eagles are a keystone species – they keep ecosystems in balance by controlling rabbits, cleaning up carcasses and recycling nutrients. As researchers monitor the return of native wildlife, the early signs are promising.
Because this is a biodiverse Environmental Planting project, Greening Australia are paying attention to the entire ecosystem. In addition to the taller trees, Greening Australia are planting ground and mid-canopy cover – all of which contribute to the generation of carbon credits.
This is essential habitat for many of the region’s threatened bird species, like the diamond firetail finch. While some new trees will take at least ten years to mature and provide habitat for breeding pairs, Greening Australia’s resident bird expert Nicki Taws (or 'Nickipedia’, as she’s affectionately known to the team) assures us this is within the breeding lifetime of birds living on site today.
This is one of the reasons we love working with CIM; they find great organisations to partner with, ensuring their impact investments will deliver lasting outcomes.
As we visit different areas of the property, I spot plenty of evidence that this landscape is already coming back to life. We were constantly accompanied by a riot of rosellas, galahs, little ravens, wallaroos and more. As Nicki told us: “Our job is to keep the common species common, and help those that are already threatened.”
Monotremes have a special place in my heart, and we were beyond lucky to meet more than one at Caddigat Road. We first spotted an echidna on the way in, playing its part in the ecosystem. By turning the soil over, echidnas help water, air and nutrients penetrate the earth so plants and microbes can take root, combating erosion and flooding.
The icing on the cake came after lunch, with the sun high overhead and throwing sparkles off the still dam water below us. The Greening Australia team chose this spot for our last briefing because the dam is home to a platypus. These shy monotremes are usually seen as elusive shadows at dawn and dusk. “You can put the chance of seeing a platypus now at about 9%”, we were told as we wandered up to the rise above the dam.
And yet, within 5 minutes of arriving, we had a visitor. “Platypus!” came an excited cry. We were in the middle of hearing about the technical aspects of registering an Environmental Planting project – a key aspect of CIM’s investment in the project – but the interruption was met only with delighted laughs. Platypuses are a great indicator of water health and help control flying insect numbers by preying on their aquatic larvae.
How biodiversity helps the climate
This is the web of life in action. Biodiversity – many wild species thriving in a healthy ecosystem – helps the climate by regulating carbon through absorption and storage in biospheres like forests or reefs. The world is full of ways to store carbon. Because different species have evolved interdependency and connection over time, diversity is what builds and maintains a well-functioning ecosystem.
Biodiversity works from the ground up: literally, with fungi and microorganisms. When plants or animals die and are not cleared away, these microbes break them down into organic matter, locking some of their carbon into the soil where it nourishes new plant growth as well as retaining more water. This helps more plants grow, which suck up more carbon.
And with more vegetation comes more invertebrates, more birds, right up to predators like quolls and wedge-tailed eagles, which all also store carbon before eventually being returned to the soil. Healthy ecosystems keep the carbon cycle in motion. A diverse ecosystem sequesters more carbon, maintains healthier soils, and manages water more efficiently than monocultures.
This is how diverse ecosystems also make land more resilient to the impacts of climate change, including extreme weather events. In fact, protecting and enhancing biodiversity is one of the best nature-based solutions to climate change – and it works in oceans as well as land.
How does investment in biodiversity earn a return?
After assessing Caddigat Road’s potential to successfully host both a large-scale restoration project and generate high-integrity carbon credits, Greening Australia bought the property in May 2024 with innovative debt financing from CIM. The project is now registered with the Clean Energy Regulator as a biodiverse Environmental Planting project that will generate ACCUs for 25 years.
Businesses across Australia buy ACCUs to offset their carbon emissions while they work to reduce them. The sale of the high-quality ACCUs generated at Caddigat Road will be used to repay the financing provided by CIM and generate returns for its investors – including most Future Super members.
In partnership with the Wolgalu People, Greening Australia will act as both landowner and project developer at Caddigat Road, embedding climate resilience at every step: from installing fire-fighting infrastructure to building climate-resilient seed banks for future plantings in the region. Through the project’s commitment to a 100-year permanence period, the carbon sequestration and biodiversity outcomes achieved on site are intended to last well beyond CIM’s investment period and for many generations to come.
As we head back to Canberra, I think about the changes this Country has seen. So much has been lost through colonisation, but we are lucky that there are experts like Aunty Alice and the Greening Australia ecologists who are working hard to protect what is still here for generations to come.
I’m grateful to for managers like CIM, and Future Super members like you who make investments like Caddigat Road possible. Together, we’re growing a legacy that will live for generations.
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