Accounting for carbon - Melbourne Knowledge Week

Join us for a unique tour of the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria and find out what happens when accountants and botanists join forces to help business go green.

The University of Melbourne's Brad Potter, Naomi Soderstrom and Ian Woodrow will take participants for a walk-and-talk through the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (RBGV) on 6 May as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week.

The major driver of carbon accumulation is tree carbon. As commitments to achieve carbon neutrality grow, this unique collaboration will have significant sustainability implications for individuals, organisations and governments.

The RBGV has been recording carbon accumulation across the garden's vast urban ecosystem for the last 25 years. This longitudinal data, coupled with new data capture using leading technology, addresses a significant gap in knowledge about tree carbon in Australia.

The diversity of plant life and environments provides a rich setting to help understand and model carbon uptake and the gardens house almost every urban tree planted elsewhere in Australia making the data transferable to other settings and all kinds of organisations.

"You can predict, with great certainty, that the pine tree you plant in, for example, suburban Brunswick will grow at a certain rate and lock a certain amount of carbon," says Professor Woodrow.

The collaboration will provide valuable reporting tools for the corporate world according to industry partner, Chartered Accountants Australia New Zealand (CA ANZ).

"Progressive organisations genuinely want to be better able to measure their carbon reductions activities," says Karen MacWilliams, Leader of Policy and Thought Leadership, CA ANZ.

This research will provide organisations with the tools and information to make better decisions about which trees they should plant towards greater net carbon benefit.

Feature Image - UA Creative