Walter Jehne
Walter is a retired scientist with a specialist background in soil microbiology and plant ecology. He is a Director with Healthy Soils Australia and has worked in Australia and overseas. He retired from the CSIRO to concentrate on regenerating Australia's landscape and improving its agricultural and pastoral sectors.
Walter is passionate about educating farmers, policymakers and others about the ‘soil carbon sponge’ and its crucial role in reversing and mitigating flooding, drought, wildfires, and searing global temperatures.
His ideas are gaining international attention. In 2017 he took part in an invitation-only United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization conference in Paris aimed at bringing soil into the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
Walter sees great value in regional communities and land managers creating on-farm microclimates to offset global warming and restore rainfall, helping draw down carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soils.