Core Benefits
Purchasing Farmer Credits, Community Credits, Cultural Fire Credits, and/or Greenfleet Offsets provides multiple benefits, not only for the communities involved, but also for everyday Australians.
Investment in these credits supports diverse cultural, environmental, social, health and wellbeing, educational, and economic benefits, including:
- Improved health of Country and people
- Indigenous hands on the steering wheel – a seat at the table and independence and control in decision making about cultural fire management on Country.
- A direct funding source to enable Indigenous cultural maintenance and revitalisation
- Partnerships, mentoring, and training for Indigenous communities
- Protection of and respect for Indigenous peoples’ cultural intellectual property
- Minimisation of the impacts of wildfires and building of resilience
- Carbon capture and mitigation of climate change and its effects.
And for you as an investor, our credits can help meet your Reconciliation Action Plan, corporate social responsibility goals, and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Core Benefits Verification Framework
The Aboriginal Carbon Foundation’s Core-Benefits Verification Framework (CBVF) promotes Indigenous leadership and networking, and provides third-party assurance to buyers our credits that claims of environmental, social, and cultural outcomes are valid and Indigenous led.
Our peer-to-peer, strengths-based verification process is built on best practice from the international development sector and is rigorous, independent, and transparent.
Indigenous Owned and Led
The key principle of the Core-Benefits Verification Framework is Indigenous ownership. The CBVF recognises Indigenous people as the experts in the verification of environmental, social, and cultural values associated with community and economic development programs.
The ‘mob-based’, ‘place-based’ verification process brings together Indigenous groups from around Australia to identify and measure the core benefits of carbon farming and/or cultural fire practice. These outcomes, specific to each mob and place, demonstrate and amplify the significance of Indigenous knowledge systems as solutions to global climate challenges.
The verification process builds upon Indigenous capacity to measure the impact of carbon farming and cultural burning practices and creates and expands Indigenous networks throughout Australia, enabling the sharing and documentation of traditional Indigenous knowledge systems.
External Verification by Trained Aboriginal Experts
All information verification, including data collection and interpretation, is undertaken by a team of trained Aboriginal experts, including rangers, Traditional Custodians, and community members from across the projects.
This gives the people directly affected, involved, and most familiar with the project the opportunity to contribute their wisdom and experience to the process, to build their skills and capacity through nationally accredited training programs, and to manage and review the project independently.
In addition, it bypasses the need to involve external audit organisations, thereby minimising the cost of verification and leaving more funds available for education and implementation.
Leveraging Strengths for Better Outcomes
Verifying the environmental, social, economic, and cultural outcomes of our credits is key to the achievement of sustainable income streams that support the ongoing implementation of carbon projects and cultural fire on Country.
The CBVF takes a strengths-based approach, leveraging the strengths of skilled Aboriginal people from communities implementing carbon projects to enhance the collection and interpretation of information.
Indigenous-led verification ensures:
- respect and knowledge of local research protocols when entering communities and gathering information;
- a strong understanding of the project context and strong relationships with participants;
- communication in the local vernacular, so that respondents are comfortable and confident to converse; and
- collection of accurate, meaningful information about the project’s core benefits.
As part of best-practice impact assessment, we triangulate this data, utilising the strengths of different approaches to data collection to promote data accuracy, verify information, aid interpretation of outcomes and impacts, and explore the processes through which these outcomes have been achieved.
Funding Acknowledgement
Funding to develop the Core Benefits Verification Framework was secured through the Queensland Government’s Carbon Plus Fund, which provides support for Aboriginal-led carbon projects and the associated employment, economic, and cultural outcomes. The framework was developed with support from Caritas Australia. We acknowledge and appreciate this funding and support, which was essential to the development of the CBVF.
