TEM partners with Wilderlands to provide Laneway Festival and other Australian businesses the ability to extend their impact by supporting biodiversity projects local to their state

Leading Asia-Pacific carbon offsetting solutions provider Tasman Environmental Markets (TEM) has partnered with biodiversity credit developer Wilderlands to launch a new environmental impact offering, which blends measurable carbon emissions reduction with local impact on native Australian biodiversity, including protecting the habitat of endangered animals and threatened plant species.

Launching ahead of National Threatened Species Day (September 7), the “Extended Impact” solution combines a one square metre Wilderlands Biological Diversity Unit (BDU) with a certified improved forest management carbon credit from TEM’s April Salumei project in Papua New Guinea. Permanently protecting vulnerable biodiversity in Australia, in parallel to funding the largest rainforest conservation project in Papua New Guinea.

The “Extended Impact” solution is available through TEM’s AFR award-winning environmental credit marketplace, TEM Online. The Wilderlands’ projects complement TEM’s existing Australian projects – enabling businesses of any size to have a local impact in the state they are based.

Wilderlands CEO Ash Knop said the partnership is reflective of the observed behaviour shift in companies beginning to assess and understand their impact on nature and consider biodiversity credits as a part of their broader environmental strategies. The Wilderlands projects also protect 36 threatened plant and animal species.

Laneway Festival is the first company to purchase the “Extended impact” solution via TEM Online; addressing the carbon emissions of air travel by touring festival personnel to the 2024 Festival.

Ali Craze, Sustainability Coordinator of Laneway Festival, said that addressing the festival’s carbon footprint alongside supporting Australian biodiversity projects aligns with Laneway’s overall climate goals.

In addition to the TEM Online “Extended Impact” investment, Laneway Festival undertakes a range of comprehensive activities to reduce its footprint and leave a positive impact, including:

• Partnering with FEAT. Live to add a Solar Slice to all Laneway tickets, with over $200,000 directed to action on climate
• Ongoing support of Yiriman Project, with over $250,000 donated to support youth in the Kimberley to reconnect with their culture in a remote and culturally significant place
• Replacing 53,220 single use plastic water bottles with canned water and encouraging the use of water refill stations to save approximately 13,195 water bottles at Laneway Adelaide in 2024.

Among the Wilderlands projects available to support through TEM is the Coorong Lakes; a project co-designed and co-managed with the traditional owners of the region the Ngarrindjeri people and home to over 61 native bird species and 222 plant species including the world’s largest known populations (on private land) of the nationally endangered Metallic Sun-orchid.

Other projects include a dedicated conservation reserve in Alleena, NSW, that aims to address the decline of the suite of birds dependent on intact woodland ecosystems, as well as a grasslands in Victoria that spreads across the vast plains alongside the Avoca River and helps protect the Critically Endangered ‘Natural Grasslands of the Murray Valley Plains’.

Laneway Festival are supporting both of these projects via the TEM Online “Extended Impact” solution. Learn more about the product and projects via TEM Online.