THE Federal Government has released a draft of a highly anticipated carbon methodology, that has been in the works for more than three years.

Integrated Farm and Land Management (IFLM) was first proposed to allow landholders to have multiple types of projects on one parcel of land, rolling them all into one audit.

However, its significance has become more about a controversial methodology known as Human Induced Regeneration – which was used to set up hundreds of projects in the mulga lands of Western Queensland and New South Wales and still accounts for the majority of Australian Carbon Credit Units on the market.

HIR was sunsetted in 2023 after a series of highly publicised criticisms from Australian National University professors, who were arguing that ACCUs were being issued to projects where genuine carbon abatement had not occurred.

When HIR was sunsetted, the Government said it was planning to roll out a similar program with the IFLM method – which was originally hoped to be finished by the end of 2022.

The new form of HIR has been heavily anticipated, with several large property transactions in the Northern Territory based on signing up projects using the methodology.

Draft method supports HIR methodology

The Federal Government has been cautious about HIR since the criticisms were made by the ANU scientists.

Labor called an independent review of the entire scheme when it came to power in 2022, to be headed up by former chief scientist Professor Ian Chubb. That review found the HIR methodology was relatively sound.

However, the criticisms have kept coming from the ANU scientists and the Government has been cautious about writing it into IFLM – at one stage announcing that it was no longer going to be part of it.

The carbon industry pushed the Department of Environment to keep going with the HIR element of IFLM and a similar program has been rolled into the draft released at the end of last year. Three types of projects are proposed to be part of the program:

• Regeneration of native forest on cleared land
• Reforestation by environmental or mallee planting
• Regeneration of native forest on suppressed lands

The third activity has been one of the most controversial forms of HIR, as it allowed producers to alter stocking rates to regenerate forests.

The IFLM draft backed this part of the methodology, referencing the Chubb review.

Soil carbon not included in the draft

The only agriculture-aligned methodology, soil carbon, has not been included in the IFLM draft as it is currently undergoing its own review.

The draft said:

“Drafting to include a soil project activity will need to consider how soil activities can be stacked on the same land as vegetation activities. Considerations will need to be given to how the baseline for soil organic carbon project activities is determined for pre-existing planting and regeneration vegetation activity areas, and how other method components will operate to include activity stacking.

“Following the review of the soil carbon method, a revised soil carbon project activity schedule and the associated abatement estimation approaches could be included in the IFLM method.”