Healthy Land & Water and its partners have a new way of showing how we are advance nature-positive solutions across South East Queensland.

Our Chair Stephen Robertson and CEO Julie McLellan launched our first Annual Sustainability Report this month at the South East Queensland Catchments Members Association (SEQCMA) AGM.

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It was the perfect forum to showcase how we, together with our large number of active partners, are delivering a huge array of projects to build a healthier, more resilient region in the face of our growing population, development pressures and the changing climate.

We are introducing a global standard in sustainability reporting: Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), which is used by investors and stakeholders to evaluate a company’s impact on society and the environment, as well as its governance practices. We are collecting key metrics which we will now be consistently measuring and reporting on each year.

A snapshot of some of our FY2023/24 highlights include:

• 109 projects across 4,000 hectares, with a $20.4 million investment.
• 40 hectares of riverbank restoration and riparian work and 8.4 km of flood resilience works.
• 22,398 ha of increased agricultural sustainability directly attributed as a result of our best practice capacity building work.
• 561 hectares of weed control and maintenance.
• $278,969 of procurement from First Nations suppliers.
• 80% of our staff trained in first aid and CPR.
• 169 site safety inspections and 75% of our field staff trained in defensive driving.
• And more…

Our Board Chair explained in his Chair’s message, that Heathy Land & Water has keenly focused on integrating sustainability into every aspect of our operations, ensuring that our projects deliver long-term benefits for both the environment and the community.

“Our efforts not only yield significant environmental benefits but also strengthen our community’s resilience and connection to the land and water that sustains us,” he says.

Our CEO Julie McLellan says that includes finding new ways to bring in new investment in the future so we can do more work faster. She said that during the year Healthy Land & Water received some well-deserved accolades for its leadership in setting up a partnership structure to enable this investment to flow.

“The new ENVestor program is structuring landscape-scale offerings providing investors with a genuine way of meeting their corporate sustainability and ESG commitments.

“As we continue investing in large-scale, landscape-level projects, our goal is to prioritise the region’s environmental health while fostering productivity and driving integrated, nature-positive solutions for future generations to thrive.

“We look forward to building out this initiative in the coming year,” she said.

Read the full Annual Sustainability Report.

Photo caption: Don Begbie, SEQCMA Board Chair; Julie McLellan, Healthy Land & Water CEO and Stephen Robertson, Healthy Land & Water Board Chair.