Australian supermarket chain Woolworths Group has teamed up with a research think-tank to co-design a pilot programme to test incentives for farmers to measure their natural capital in supply chains.
Woolworths announced the partnership with Climateworks Centre to design the pilot, saying it sought to demonstrate how farmers can benefit from measuring and improving natural capital on their properties.
“This pilot is a first attempt to demonstrate a clear, consistent, and agreed approach to measuring natural capital, and to inform decision making on-farm and in the broader supply chain,” Eithne Cahill, programme impact manager at Climateworks, said.
“Different ways of measuring the state of nature have emerged across industries and land use sectors, and this fragmentation is a barrier to valuing nature at scale.”
A statement from Climateworks said robust measurement can help demonstrate the private and public benefit of maintaining and improving nature to investors, buyers, and consumers of agricultural products, and can open new income streams for farmers, such as biodiversity credits and stewardship payments.
The pilot will launch in October, and Woolworths will identify a supply chain and product category in which to offer farmers the opportunity to be voluntary participants in the pilot.
The findings will inform how the supermarket, and stakeholders in its supply chains, can consider natural capital risks and opportunities in their decision making.
It will draw on Climateworks’ Natural Capital Measurement Catalogue to provide a consistent reference source for a comprehensive set of natural metrics and methods, after extensive stakeholder and expert input, the statement said.
The think-tank said the pilot was part of the Natural Capital Investment Initiative, and is one of several pilots to be announced as part of it.
“The multi-year programme is a significant collaborative effort involving a range of stakeholders and partners,” Cahill said.
“This catalogue offers broader potential to help inform company preparations for corporate disclosure frameworks, such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures.”
Climateworks’ catalogue is designed to be consistent with national and international standards and frameworks, such as the UN’s System of Economic-Environmental Accounting, the Natural Capital Protocol, and the Taskforce for Nature-related Disclosures (TNFD).
It is intended to be a live resource that will be refined, expanded, and tested over time to ensure that it supports measurement of natural capital for a wider range of applications and user groups.
The ongoing development of the catalogue is being governed by technical experts from the CSIRO and several Australian universities.
Climateworks and Woolworth’s pilot is expected to run until at least Dec. 2024.
According to its 2022 sustainability report, Woolworths is a member of the TNFD Forum to help it understand the nature-related risks in its supply chain.
The supermarket chain purchased 427 million kilograms of beef, lamb, pork, and chicken, and 995 mln kg of fruit and vegetables from Australian producers and growers in 2022, according to its regional report, meaning its policy decisions will have a material impact on the country’s environment.
By Mark Tilly – mark@carbon-pulse.com
*** Click here to sign up to our weekly biodiversity newsletter ***
