Managing the land could challenge tree planting when it comes to carbon credits.
Brendon Grylls may have moved on from politics to commercial life, but he remains firmly involved in regional development.
Most recently, that involves a business that wants to help Indigenous groups earn income from managing their own land.
The former Nationals WA leader, who was the architect of the Royalties for Regions scheme and responsible for its implementation as regional development and lands minister more than a decade ago, has taken a leadership role with carbon credit group Salubris, backed by investment adviser Argonaut.
Salubris already owns the 200,000-hectare Gindalbie station in the Goldfields. Here, it earns carbon credits through increasingly common techniques such as destocking, as well as feral animal and weed suppression, allowing the native flora to recover in what is referred to as human-induced regeneration.
It is in the process of raising $30 million to acquire more than a million further hectares of land in the Murchison area and Nullarbor region.
However, Mr Grylls said the company was also working with Indigenous people in the Goldfields to determine a fire management methodology that could earn carbon credits, as has already been occurring in the Kimberley under a process called savanna fire management.
Salubris recently revealed a deal with traditional owners in the Goldfields, the Marlinyu Ghoorlie people, to generate carbon credits and secure land tenure, including over Crown land with which the Indigenous group has an established connection.
Currently, the state’s southern half has nothing like the officially recognised savanna management scheme.
Under the Kimberley-focused scheme, eight projects earn between 150,000 and 200,000 Australian carbon credit units a year for using traditional Indigenous ‘cool fires’ to suppress fuel loads and avoid far more damaging and carbon-emitting wildfires at the hottest time of year.
Since the scheme was launched in 2019, eight Kimberley projects of this nature have been issued with 2.67 million ACCUs with an estimated value of at least $80 million.
That is a significant portion of the carbon credits being earned across regional Western Australia from human-induced regeneration.
However, much of the high-profile work to date regarding this process in WA has involved tree planting, sometimes in competition with agriculture, by a variety of players including Woodside Energy and specialist operators such as Carbon Neutral, Decarbonology and Shellowned Select Carbon.
Since 2008, for instance, Carbon Neutral’s Yarra Yarra project has planted more than 30 million mixed-native trees and shrubs across more than 21,000ha in a bid to create a 200-kilometre green corridor from the coast north of Perth to the eastern edge of the Wheatbelt.
The aim is to reconnect remnant vegetation with 12 nature reserves across a 50,000 square kilometre area.
Another player, Corporate Carbon, based in Sydney, has its 1,669ha Western Farm Trees project, which is an aggregation of six landholdings in the southern Wheatbelt.
Corporate Carbon also cites participation in Emissions Reduction Fund projects involving savanna fire management in the Kimberley, in conjunction with local Indigenous groups.
Mr Grylls sees the opportunity to emulate the savanna arrangement and enrich Indigenous groups such as the Marlinyu Ghoorlie as per those in the Kimberley who had a financial incentive to manage the land in the traditional way.
“What we need to do in the southern part of the state is broadly similar,” Mr Grylls told Business News.
“We know that when the fire burns you’ve got a carbon emission.
“And so, if you can reduce the scale and severity of those fires, then it’s logical that should be credit.
“But there’s still a bit more work to do to prove that.”
Mr Grylls said Salubris took the view that involving Indigenous groups was a big win for both partners, and the community.
He said the cost of developing the fire management methodology was much cheaper than buying pastoral land, some of which would remain suitable for grazing.
It would give Indigenous groups income for wildfire suppression on vast areas of Crown land that were otherwise impossible to manage commercially or on the public purse.
“To get twenty-five years’ tenure [of unallocated Crown land], we would need the partnership of the land title group,” Mr Grylls said.
“That’s why this is a great opportunity for native title groups, because people like Salubris are out there looking at project innovation.
“There’s not much point spending millions of dollars on science if you can’t secure the tenure of the land.”
Furthermore, Mr Grylls said the carbon credit buyers were willing to pay more for ACCUs that had Indigenous content, often because the purchase helped meet targets beyond abatement, such as employment and procurement.
“If you can partner [with Indigenous groups], the end product’s credit has got a premium attached to it, as shown by the savannah burning credits in the north,” he said.
“So that’s a partnership that makes the value of the end product more, which would seem to be a smart partnership to have.”
Mr Grylls said the carbon market’s structure ensured that Indigenous involvement was deeper than it might be in mining deals.
“If you’re seeking to get a premium for selling credits, that means the partnership has to be just as strong in year three as it was the day you signed it,” he said.
“And everything that’s happened in this space is showing that, even if you’ve got your assigned approval, make sure your relationship stays strong.”
While Mr Grylls is a relative newcomer to Salubris after joining last year, its backstory lies with chief executive Peter Balsarini, whose first attempt to launch a carbon credit business failed when initial federal government efforts under prime minister Julia Gillard were dismantled by her successor and opponent, Tony Abbott.
Mr Balsarini joined Argonaut and was offering a consulting service in the sector. This ultimately evolved into a business called Carbonaut, which had plans for an initial public offering.
Had it gone ahead, Carbonaut would have been rare example of a stockbroker listing a company it had formed itself.
However, the immaturity of the carbon market and the complexity in explaining it to investors resulted in Argonaut rethinking its strategy and deciding to leave the business as a private player in this relatively new sector, renaming it Salubris.
Before joining Salubris, Mr Grylls said he had some involvement in what he called a blue-carbon project in Karratha, which involved restoration or regeneration of mangrove swamps on the coast and river systems.
That remains an area of interest for Salubris.
“I think looking at how we might generate WA’s carbon needs in areas of this essentially lazy land would seem to be a smarter tactic than tying up all of the agricultural estate,” Mr Grylls said.
