ACT Branch Seminar | Using carbon sequestration to finance the restoration of a charismatic, threatened species

Date

Time

5:30-6:30pm

Venue

The Function Room, University House, The Australian National University, 1 Balmain Cres, Acton ACT 2601

Speakers

Price

Ordinary Member Cost: $0.00
Student Member Cost: $0.00
Emeritus Member Cost: $0.00
Non Members Cost: $0.00

Description

Please arrive by 5:25pm for a 5:30 start, and conclusion is at 6:30pm followed by networking drinks and nibbles at the University House Bar. Drinks will be pay your own way, light snacks provided.

This is an in-person only event. Please register by Wednesday 16 September 2026.

ABSTRACT

Biodiversity is declining rapidly but funding to reverse this trend remains insufficient, partly reflecting the difficulty in causally linking the supply of ecosystem services with a specie’s presence and the absence of markets that value the supply of those ecosystem services. We address both difficulties by using entropy matching to quasi-experimentally estimate the value of restoring the habitat of Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius johnsonii) on Carbon sequestration, a service for which a market already exists. Our results show that restoring Cassowary habitat to areas where it is no longer present would lead to an average increase in Carbon stock of 11.04 tonnes per ha. Private financing of these actions can be justified by Carbon prices of AUD$42.49 per tonne of CO₂e, values that are only slightly above current market prices but are substantially below accepted estimates of the social cost of carbon.