4 Ways a Landowner Can Make Money From Their natural assets
Earning money with sustainable land management has always been difficult, but new opportunities are emerging.
With climate crisis scenario landowners are seeing a variety of sustainable opportunities to make an extra profit using their land. We choose 4 ways to do it and in this article we will deep dive in each one of them.
1. Get additional revenue stream from protected areas
You probably know how much is an acre of land worth in your region, right? In general, we are used to make this type of valuation based on the potential the area has to agriculture or cattle farming for example.
So when we face a land that has the majority of your area covered with forests or under protection, many people could argue: “this land there’s no value” or the forest owner may think there’s no way to make money from it.
But with the rise of new environmental solutions landowners can earn money by simply keeping the land as it is, benefiting all species living or growing there and keeping forests, nature, and biodiversity safe.
In this scenario environmental rural properties are evaluated in an integrated way by combining forest and productive areas, taking into account environmental, social and economic aspects.
2. Earn incomes from biodiversity & natural services
Alongside carbon capture and regenerative farming, Biodiversity Net Gain is becoming a buzz word for how farmers can use their natural capital to create alternate income streams.
Biodiversity stands for the variety of life and plants on earth. High biodiversity means more crops and species and less biodiversity means the opposite. Simply put; if you have less biodiversity more species and crops will go extinct, thus we will have fewer resources on the planet.
Farmers have the largest effect on biodiversity from all of us humans. Whether its water usage, land usage or crop cultivation; farmers make important decisions that directly have an impact on the environment.
We can see a lot of new opportunities rising in this field. For example, in Australia the government started a project with this focus, launching a brand new buying and selling platform for biodiversity credit.
According to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation this market it’ll be value $48b by 2050.
3. Farming with Biodiversity
Transforming our global food systems is central to meeting the largest challenges faced by humanity, including climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity and risks to future pandemics. The current food system is responsible for a third of greenhouse gases, 80% of deforestation, 70% of terrestrial biodiversity loss, and has been linked to a dramatic rise in our exposure to zoonotic diseases, such as Ebola, SARS, and COVID-19.
A healthy future requires us to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and limit climate change while meeting the fundamental human right to healthy and nutritious food for all. It is only possible to achieve this by transforming our food systems and adopting nature-positive production practices at scale and within planetary boundaries. Different solutions will be required in different contexts, but agroecological approaches, that apply ecological and social principles to agricultural production, are a fundamental part of this transformation.
Around the world, research, evidence and experience shows that it is possible for agricultural systems within multi-functional landscapes to provide food, feed, fuel and fibre as well as habitat and corridor functions for biodiversity, climate resilience and enhanced ecosystem services.
Agroecological approaches provide a pathway to protect nature, manage agriculture in ways that enhance the richness of biodiversity and restore the ecosystem functions of degraded systems, by applying a holistic and interconnected set of ecological and social concepts to the design and management of food and agricultural systems. The ten elements of agroecology can be applied at the farm, landscape and food system level, to realize nature-positive production at scale.
Some Governments and Companies like most of the B Corps, already recognize the outcomes delivered by agroecological approaches, and provide incentives to mainstream nature positive agriculture.
4. Make an impact on local communities by protecting your forest
We see deforestation happening more rapidly than ever, making the lives of local communities harder and harder.
With Carbon Offsetting, you can directly improve the life quality of your local community. Forests are one of the key ecosystems and, depending on the area you’re living in, they’re crucial to your local region and communities. Besides, forests are important to keep for all the other ecosystem services as well!
In landscapes that consist predominantly or to a large extent of intact natural ecosystems, the first priority should be to protect the remaining natural habitat, including indigenous territories, from conversion to agriculture or other type of intensive use of the land. That’s why the carbon market are so important to help this conservation movement scale in the timeframe we need.
If you want to get deeper in the Carbon Market topic, read our post about the recent strong increase in the carbon credit prices.
