Australia’s land use future

Land underpins Australia’s economy, communities and environment – sustaining food and fibre production, regional livelihoods, biodiversity and climate stability.

These functions are increasingly under pressure as climate change, biodiversity decline, energy system transformation and population growth place competing demands on Australia’s landscapes.

At the same time, global decarbonisation and nature repair commitments are reshaping investment flows.

How land is used, protected and restored is critical to Australia’s long- term prosperity and resilience. Australia’s current land-use settings are not designed for the scale of change now underway.

Decision-making is fragmented across sectors and jurisdictions, with agricultural, environmental, climate and energy policies often developed in isolation.

As change accelerates, this fragmentation risks unintended trade-offs and disorderly transitions for landholders and communities.

Australia can restore biodiversity and reduce and remove emissions – all while maintaining a thriving agriculture sector.

This report demonstrates that a more deliberate and integrated approach to land-use management is essential, achievable and beneficial.

However, coordinated choices about what changes – and where this change occurs – are needed to unlock substantial co-benefits across climate mitigation, climate adaptation, food security and regional development.

Using spatial scenario modelling through Climateworks Centre and Deakin University’s Land Use Trade-Offs model version 2 (LUTO2) shows the scale of opportunity for Australia’s land sector:

• Adopting environmental planting across 11.6 million hectares could sequester 109 megatonnes (Mt) of carbon emissions per year by 2050. Including riparian plantings alongside other sequestration sources sees total sequestration reaching 127 Mt by 2050.
• Our sensitivity analysis shows that restoring 67 per cent more degraded land could deliver 178 Mt of annual sequestration by 2050 while solving for increasing agricultural demand.
• Adopting new technologies can reduce agricultural emissions by 12.1 Mt per year by 2050, while also improving on-farm yields. Shifting where some commodities are produced provides additional opportunities to enhance climate resilience, free up high-biodiversity land for restoration and allow farmers to use marginal lands more effectively.
• Spreading land-use change across regions has the potential to support more balanced restoration and increase the use of mixed land uses like agroforestry. This approach, however, introduces different trade-offs and a 10 per cent higher cumulative transition cost.

Restoring and protecting ecosystems delivers a triple dividend for biodiversity, carbon storage and resilience.

Large-scale environmental plantings, restoring land along waterways and improving land management practices can increase land-sector sequestration, complemented by improvements in on-farm efficiency and emissions-reduction technologies.

These outcomes depend on enabling policy and incentives, informed by careful spatial analysis, to maximise benefits and manage trade-offs.

Where change occurs matters for communities as well as the broader web of life.

Scenario planning provides a foundation for informed dialogue, enabling governments, communities and investors to navigate uncertainty and align on objectives.

Different patterns of change create different economic, cultural, environmental and climate outcomes, and our modelling shows how benefits can be distributed.

Taken together, our findings point to a clear opportunity: a national framework for land-use that brings greater coherence to how Australia plans for change across its landscapes.

A shared, evidence-based framework can integrate climate, biodiversity and agricultural priorities, support collaboration, respect Indigenous ways of knowing and caring for Country, and provide clarity for investors, policymakers and communities.

By aligning land-use choices with national goals, Australia can support a resilient economy and healthy ecosystems.

Download the report [PDF 2.5mb]