Why we do it

Biodiversity hotspot

Covering 3.5 million hectares in South Queensland, the Brisbane Rivers ecosystem is a biodiversity hotspot. It includes the Gondwana Rainforests Heritage Area and Moreton Bay Ramsar site and is home to iconic animal species like koala, lungfish, dugong, platypus and eastern curlew.

Without long-term investment and conservation, the Brisbane Rivers ecosystem could face catastrophic ecological collapse within a decade.

Healthy Land & Water is working with the Landscape Finance Lab to create a large, long-term investment programme to restore the ecological infrastructure of South East Queensland on which liveability depends.

The programme is focused on building resilience to climate threats, restoring local habitats and ecosystems, improving water quality and protecting threatened and native species.

We are pulling together an active consortium of partners and investors to ensure South East Queensland remains a great place to live, work, visit and play.

Co-benefits

Each landscape-scale offering delivers a host of co-benefits across environment, economy, society, community and culture.

Green credentials

Each landscape-scale offering provides investors with a genuine way of meeting their corporate sustainability and ESG commitments.

Priority landscapes

Each landscape-scale offering catalyses sustainable business investment in priority landscapes.

Integrated & scaled-up for greater impact

Each drives new sources of finance into large-scale nature-based solutions to rejuvenate the environment while providing tangible benefits to the economy and society.

As the population in South East Queensland grows rapidly, there is a greater demand for housing and infrastructure. Such infrastructure is fragmenting large, forested areas and threatening iconic species like koalas. Similarly, the area’s development has led to ecological ‘chaos’ in the river system which makes the area dramatically at risk of flooding.

The river ecosystem is valued at AUD 7 billion annually, but flood damage in the region incurred over AUD 7 billion in recovery costs during 2022. There are further correlated impacts that undermine the resilience of natural systems on which life depends - for instance new algal blooms will emerge undermining farm and fishery productivity and threatening drinking water supply.

Healthy Land & Water along with the Landscape Finance Lab and consortium partners want to steer investment into restorative land use and regenerative business practices.

We are building a landscape finance instrument that shows pathways to scalable investment approaches - including carbon and biodiversity payments and policy packages that incentivise regenerative development.