TRANSFORM 2024: The nature positive agenda was top of mind at last week’s Transform Conference, the annual get together of industry leaders held by the Green Building Council of Australia.
What is nature positive?
“We are really fortunate to have an international global definition of nature-based solutions,” Guy Williams, executive director of Pollination, told Dominique Hes chair of GreenFleet during one of the sessions at the Transform conference last week held by the Green Building Council of Australia at the Hilton Hotel.
According to Williams, the framework set out by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) addresses large societal challenges such as climate change, food security and coastal resilience in which organisations can base efforts on protecting, sustainably managing, and restoring nature.
The idea that nature positive was much more than addressing issues around offsets and asset quality was unanimous.
In an earlier session around the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), EY Oceania’s partner in climate change and sustainability services, Alexandra Banks, said nature positive wasn’t just moving towards a net zero economy, but rather an economy “where we are living in harmony with nature”.
The birth of TNFD
“The TNFD is really taking us closer to understanding centring human existence within nature and not seeing it as oppositional,” Banks said.
At the keynote address on Tuesday, to kick off the conference, heading up the TNFD executive director Tony Goldner explained the importance of adopting TNFD frameworks.
“As architects, urban planners and builders, your community is really at the forefront of reconciling the needs of the built environment with those of the natural environment,” Goldner said.
Being part of the infrastructure space himself 20 years ago, Goldner reassured the crowd that the “choices and trade offs were never easy” when consequences could span decades and significant public and regulatory scrutiny.
“[The TNFD] was really born out of a realisation that we need to move beyond the carbon tunnel vision of the past 20 years and need to start accounting for the impacts and dependencies on the rest of nature and their corresponding risks to our businesses and to society as a whole.
“Our approach is the conviction that doing less harm to nature needs to be explicitly differentiated from generating positive or contributing positive impacts to nature.
Goldner said that Australia was the only two, among the 17 global nature superpowers, with enough educational talents, scientific research capabilities and financial market sophistication to lead – the other being the United States.
“Reducing water consumption and waste production is inherently different from producing an inherently positive impact on the natural surroundings in which you’re operating.”
These countries have “more to lose than most from inaction.”
Current nature positive climate
Alexandra Banks partner, climate change and sustainability services, EY Oceania said that while it was true that environmental regulation was slow and lagging, industries, especially the financial sector, were tending to blame the government for the lack of regulations rather than acting.
“At this point, there is an overreliance on regulatory conformance in Australia and how that’s not meeting consumer expectations but at the same time, we can recognise that the regulation isn’t meeting expectations.
“It’s the government’s job to give us the permits and approval processes, yes, but the reality is the vast majority of environmental regulation and property regulation is at that state level.”
According to Banks, while it was important to engage the federal government, it was not the government’s job to tell property owners where it could develop and what biodiversity offsets would be needed for a project.
Development can get complex for local governments, so it was up to the developers to evaluate the different layers of government and the expectations of each layer.
“We are one of the 17 mega diverse countries, and the state of our environment and the rate of extinction of species and decline in biodiversity is appalling,” Banks said.
The pressure is coming from finance
“Regulation is catching up with community expectations now on what we should be doing to protect and restore the environment in this country. The pressure will continue to come from the financial sector.”
Therefore, it was important to report your intentions and progress to your financial advisors, she said.
“That’s why the treasurer is talking about the regulations and mandatory climate reporting in the future and not our environment ministers.”
Inspiring nature positive solutions with case studies
According to Dominique Hes who described her journey with nature positive as intrinsically tied to First Nations.
“My own reconciliation journey is about learning language from my place, but also to learn about seasons. [We need to] know how to design our landscapes, our buildings and how to adapt,” Hes said.
“The Eora nation has six seasons, and currently, it’s Burran. It’s hot and dry, the male kangaroos are getting aggressive…, and that knowledge tells them it’s time not to eat meat. There are violent storms, so don’t stay near creeks because they could flood quickly.
“There’s a lot of wisdom from our First Nations people and there’s a lot we can learn in our journey together.”
Another solution led by her organisation GreenFleet, which works to offset people’s carbon by restoring ecosystems, was working with farmers in sustainable regenerative agriculture.
There’s no solution to nature
Meanwhile, Pollination’s Guy Williams said, “nature based solutions” were “critical” and that “it’s not a discussion whether nature is the next emerging issue or now something we have to act upon, but how we actually tap into the body of knowledge we have on nature.”
“Nature is not to be solved”
Williams added that when it comes to buzzwords such as “solutions”, “nature is not to be solved”.
“There’s no end goal where you go ‘Yes, nature’s done, let’s go back to climate’. It doesn’t work that way. Nature is wonderfully, beautifully, and inherently complex. We need tools and solutions, and things like Wilderlands and the work of GBCA help us navigate that, but you’ll never know you’ve got it right – and that’s okay with me.”
Adopting land
Ash Knop, the chief executive of Wilderlands, was also a panellist. His company allows organisations to “pick a square metre of vulnerable Australian habitat and protect it forever.”
The partnering organisation can learn about its unique flora and fauna and receive regular updates from ecologists on how its funding has helped the land flourish.
According to Knop, the most important aspect when looking at nature positive – is what it means for the company. He shares a case study of the Melbourne Connect property, based in Carlton and owned by Lendlease.
“We are running this sustainability summit, and we asked the team about how we can bring nature into this environment? So Lendlease agreed to protect the equivalent footprint of that event space, so we created 10 square metre bundles of protection for all delegates.
“The delegates all went home with more than just a standard conference tote bag. They went home with something meaningful – an opportunity to engage with the protection of the projects they are supporting. We created an augmented reality experience for the foyer of that building to bring that beautiful but sterile environment to life. “
Elham Monavari, the head of Green Star strategic delivery at GBCA, added that having the square metre measurement was important as comparing qualitative and quantitative aspects of nature and biodiversity was extremely difficult.
She added that “nature positive” had changed significantly from offsetting carbon emissions by “planting a tree”.
“We’ve got more sophisticated, and there are opportunities to bring the community together.” “I know that for many people in the room, when we talk about nature based solutions, there might be a bit of an achy feeling that, you know, you’re not doing things on site. But when we go back to Green Star, to target that credit, you have to demonstrate you’ve done some of the other credits within the category – and nature based solutions are a part of the suite of what we need to do to be able to address the biodiversity and the nature loss challenges that we’re facing.”