Carbon farming is a new land use option over extensive areas of the Australian rangelands. This land use change has been promoted by government incentives to mitigate climate change, with most of Australia’s land sector abatement to date being delivered in rangelands. Aside from these mitigation benefits, carbon farming has also demonstrated potential co-benefits that enhance socio-ecological resilience by diversifying land uses and income streams, providing opportunities for sustainable land management to enhance soil and vegetation and creating opportunities for self-organisation and collaboration. However, factors such as policy uncertainty, perceived loss of future land use flexibility and the potential for carbon farming eligibility to create social divisions may negatively affect resilience. In this paper we weigh up these risks, opportunities and co-benefits and propose indicators for measuring the impact of carbon farming on the resilience of rangeland systems. A set of land policy principles for enhancing resilience through carbon farming are also identified.

在澳大利亚牧场的广大地区，碳耕作是一种新的土地利用方式。政府减少气候变化的激励措施促进了土地用途的变化，迄今为止，澳大利亚大部分土地部门的减排工作都在牧场进行。除了这些减缓效益外，碳农业还显示出潜在的共同效益，可通过土地利用和收入来源的多样化来增强社会生态适应力，为可持续土地管理提供机会，以增强土壤和植被，并创造自组织和合作的机会。但是，诸如政策不确定性，未来土地使用灵活性的预期丧失以及碳农业有资格建立社会分化的潜力等因素可能会对弹性产生负面影响。在本文中，我们权衡了这些风险，机会和共同利益，并提出衡量碳农业对牧场系统弹性的影响的指标。还确定了一套土地政策原则，以通过碳耕作提高抵御能力。