CEO Carolyn Hall recently represented Mulloon Institute and Australia at Berlin’s Partners for Change – SOILutions for a Food Secure, Resilient, and Sustainable Future conference in May. Carolyn shares a series of blog posts reflecting on the aims, challenges, impacts and themes that ran throughout the conference.
Representing Mulloon Institute and standing before 150 delegates at the Partners for Change – SOILutions for a Food Secure, Resilient, and Sustainable Future conference in Berlin, I faced the question that follows me everywhere: “What’s the financial return on landscape restoration?”
The Familiar Pattern
Day one’s insights were clear:
This sounded familiar. In Australia, whether talking to government, corporates or investors, everyone wants the same thing: show me the money.
The Numbers Game
The financial case is solid. Our Mulloon Rehydration Initiative economic analysis for the Economics of Drought Report (ELD – Economics of Land Degradation Initiative and UNU INWEH) showed that for catchment restoration:
But here’s what keeps me awake: the most transformative benefits can’t be captured in a spreadsheet.
The Unmeasurable Wealth
How do you price a farming community’s ability to face drought with confidence rather than despair? What’s the ROI on First Nations people regaining access to Country to fulfill 65,000-year-old cultural obligations?
These aren’t rhetorical questions, they’re the heart of why our work matters.
The Real Challenge
We need to become bilingual: speaking the language of finance while never forgetting the language of the land. We must present compelling economics while telling the human stories that give those numbers meaning.
The question isn’t “What’s the ROI?” – it’s “What’s the cost of not acting?”
When framed that way, landscape restoration isn’t just a good investment – it’s an investment that makes sense.
