Leveraging native title rights through carbon farming partnerships

Carbon projects are relatively new in Australia and have experienced rapid growth in the last few years, particularly in the land sector. It is imperative to ensure that native title holders and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander landowners are appropriately consulted, engaged in, and benefit from this emerging sector. This requires navigation of complex and intersecting laws relating to land management and ownership, native title rights and carbon farming, among others.

Carbon farming partnerships in savanna burning and vegetation projects are providing new opportunities for native title holders to benefit from, and actively participate in, improved land management across a breadth of different land tenure types and range of different native title rights (including determinations on pastoral land and Indigenous managed lands).

Native title holders and Aboriginal corporation landowners will share experiences on the processes their organisations undertook to establish partnerships with carbon farming project developers and/or pastoralists, and the opportunities or challenges they faced in leveraging their respective native title rights. They will also share perspectives regarding environmental, cultural and economic benefits these carbon farming partnerships are delivering in their respective community contexts