West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Project

What's the project all about?

The West Arnhem Fire Management Project (WALFA) is a partnership between Darwin Liquefied Natural Gas (DLNG), the Northern Territory Government, the Northern Land Council and relevant Aboriginal Traditional Owners and indigenous representative organisations, formed to implement strategic fire management across 28,000 km² of Western Arnhem Land for the purposes of offsetting some of the greenhouse gas emissions from the Liquefied Natural Gas plant at Wickham Point in Darwin Harbour.

The project aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from this area by adopting effective fire management practices in what is today mostly unmanaged land. Such practices will also help conserve environmental and cultural values in the project region equivalent to the adjacent World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

To achieve this, the WALFA project partners will implement strategic fire management from early in the dry season to reduce the size and extent of unmanaged wildfires. Note that the agreement between the project partners is know as the West Arnhem Land Fire Abatement Agreement (WAFMA).

What is the link to the Liquefied Natural Gas Plant?

The operators of the new Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant in Darwin — the DLNG consortium  — have entered into an agreement with the NT Government to offset some of the greenhouse gas emissions produced the plant as part of their operations. Following assessment of other greenhouse offset opportunities elsewhere in the country (e.g. blue-gum and pine plantations), the company decided upon the West Arnhem Fire management project option as being highly cost-effective, and politically relevant to the Top End situation.

What quantity of Greenhouse Gas emissions will be reduced by this project and will such reductions meet international guidelines?

The international guidelines on what constitutes valid greenhouse gas abatement stems from the Kyoto Protocol. To meet these requirements the abatement must firstly involve greenhouse emissions that are caused by people — i.e. are “anthropogenic”. Studies of the ignition patterns of fires on the Western Arnhem Land Plateau over the past decade show that virtually all major fires are started by people and not by lightning. The causes range from fires lit for other purposes that get away to accidental ignition from various sources.

Secondly, carbon dioxide emissions cannot be counted in the case of fire emissions because these are considered to be re-absorbed by new plant growth following fire (IPCC, 1996). Although, as described in the sub-pages at left, there is a great deal of evidence that this is not the case for northern Australian wildfires, the West Arnhem Land project only counts the abatement of the non-CO₂ gases emitted by fire: methane and nitrous oxides.

Even so, 41% of the NT’s greenhouse emissions and around 2% of Australia's total greenhouse emissions are due to methane and nitrous oxides from savanna fires (AGO, 2006).

Currently around 10% of the project area’s landscapes are affected by early dry season fires and from 30–60% are affected by late dry season wildfires in most years. If the proportion of early dry season fires can be increased to around 15–20% to create fire breaks and patchy mosaics of burnt country and if this then reduces the extent of late dry season burning to 15–20% of the landscape, then savings (abatement) of around 100,000 tonnes a year of CO₂-equivalent in greenhouse gas emissions can be made. Note that this is a relatively small fraction of the total emissions from the LNG plant - many of the main benefits of the project are seen to be in better protecting the natural and cultural values of the plateau and in the social and economic stimulus it provides for Indigenous communities.

Does this project have anything to do with carbon trading?

This project is not generating any income from carbon trading. Rather, it is a fee for service arrangement in which indigenous fire managers are being paid for fire management to produce greenhouse gas offsets. However, the process and accounting practices used to abate greenhouse emissions in this project would qualify for carbon trading if, for example, the market arose in the future. This approach would have significant potential for application in other fire-prone regions of north Australia.

Read the pages at left to find out more about fire managment and how it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.