New Futures for Victorian Landcare is a fresh approach to planning and financing for sustainable land management in the Kiewa-Wodonga area.
Funded by Victorian Landcare, this initiative is underway and seeks to pursue solutions to important challenges, including the need to:
● develop new pathways for investment into landscape restoration and sustainable agriculture beyond grant-based project funding;
● initiate planning processes that mobilise local knowledge and enable effective on-ground action; and
● establish practical systems for monitoring, evaluation, and communication that demonstrate environmental impact and social change.
Developed as an alternative to business-as-usual approaches to natural resource management, New Futures is designed to support the participation of landholders, agencies and the wider community in established and emerging investment markets that are seeking high-quality projects.
At its core, New Futures involves the development of an investment-ready plan for the Kiewa-Wodonga area. The plan will be designed to secure investment that supports productivity, the ongoing protection and restoration of the landscape and secures new and diversified revenue opportunities for our farming community.
Through New Futures local farmers and producers from the Kiewa-Wodonga area are working alongside national and international practitioners to explore, identify and assess new and emerging investment markets that may be possible for our region.
In April 2025 the Kiewa Catchment Landcare Group (KCLG) & Wodonga Urban Landcare Network (WULN) were selected to join New Futures, becoming one of four pilot regions in Victoria. As a collective, KCLG and WULN are overseeing development of an investment-ready landscape plan for the Kiewa-Wodonga area during 2025. The plan is designed to attract significant investment from existing and emerging markets to support the ongoing protection and restoration of key landscape values.
Environmental markets (carbon and biodiversity), supply chain (sustainability requirements over time), and other investment markets can lead to new or diversified funding streams for our farming community to continue farm and landscape restoration and implement sustainable agriculture practices.
● Ten pilot landholders have joined the project and will complete a farm-scale assessment using the Regen Farmers Mutual model to baseline their carbon emissions profile and explore options for management of their property, landscape interventions, and investment opportunities.
● Individual farm information will be collated to identify patterns and options for investment across our region.
● ANU Sustainable Farms will lead an evaluation survey as part of this process and Landscape Finance Lab will support the process around financial modelling.
● A skills-based New Futures working group has been formed to contribute and reality-check information, and offer expertise and insights along the way.
The project will be finalised in November 2025 and we look forward to launching our plan and sharing our learnings.