The need to protect, manage, and restore nature is at an all-time high. Addressing the interconnected crises of nature loss and climate change requires bold, scalable action—starting at the local level.
Across Australia and beyond, diverse communities, businesses, and organisations are leading with solutions that tackle the biggest environmental challenges of our time by enabling, delivering, and scaling conservation, land management, and restoration action.
The 2025 ALCA Conference will showcase these efforts, celebrating the people and partnerships driving this work: from Indigenous leaders to dedicated conservation, farming and business professionals, community volunteers, and local champions— their collective onground efforts strengthen the cross-sector and cross-cultural solutions we urgently need.
The conference will demonstrate the strong business case for backing local action, and explore how to unlock opportunities, overcome challenges, and align local initiatives and innovations with national and global biodiversity and climate goals.
With almost 200 countries rallying to deliver the Global Biodiversity Framework, it is a pivotal time for conservation practitioners and decision-makers across all sectors to come together, to collaborate and share insights, amplify local nature action, and drive transformative change for a healthier, more resilient planet.
Who attends?
Now in its 9th year, the ALCA Conference continues to grow in reach and relevance as the private land conservation sector’s work becomes more broadly recognised as an essential strategy for safeguarding Australia’s environmental, economic, cultural and social well-being.
The ALCA Conference is Australia’s premier land conservation event. It brings together more than 400 conservation practitioners, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and land managers, government policymakers, researchers, business and finance thought leaders, industry experts, and community champions, all working to advance collective impact for nature.
About the Australian Land Conservation Alliance
The Australian Land Conservation Alliance is the peak national body for organisations that protect, steward and restore nature on privately owned or managed land.
ALCA supports its members to scale their impact for people and nature by delivering sector development initiatives, advocating for good policy and regulation, driving nature investment, and growing Australia’s understanding of the value of private land conservation. Together, we are a powerful force for nature.
ALCA receives ongoing support from multi-year funding partners, whose long-term commitments bolster ALCA's organisational capacity. It enables ALCA to pursue its goal to grow a diverse, highly capable and well-resourced sector that safeguards and restores Australia's privately managed land and water. Convening an annual conference and delivering it in a way that is inclusive for all is just one way that ALCA works towards achieving this goal.
The Nature Conservancy - Michael Looker
GreenCollar
Bush Heritage Australia
Nature Foundation - Douglas Ransom
2024
Conference Highlights
Unpacking the Global Nature Positive Summit
Held alongside the world-first Global Nature Positive Summit, the 2024 ALCA Conference helped to elevate private land conservation in national and international discussions. It grounded the high-level policy and finance talks from the Summit in real, actionable steps that will help realise national ambition for a healthy, prosperous, resilient future for all Australians.
Global and national conservation leaders interrogated the Summit’s contributions to driving action and investment into conservation, restoration and land management, and reflected that whilst the Summit was a good start, we need to pull as many levers as possible, with urgency. There were calls for better funding, embedding Indigenous and community knowledge and involvement, and blended finance for both nature and climate goals. Panellists reflected that the Government does best when it doesn’t pretend it has all the answers and listens to innovative ideas that might initially feel uncomfortable. We heard that there is no lack of money for the transition we need, but we need to do it with integrity, and speed; which sparked essential discussions on the opportunities for Australia to position itself as a global conservation leader.
“When one nation steps back, others must come forward.” – Gary Tabor, CEO, Center for Large Landscape Conservation
30 by 30 Roadmap launched
Minister for the Environment and Water The Hon Tanya Plibersek released the National Roadmap for Protecting and Conserving 30 per cent of Australia’s Land by 2030. The Roadmap recognises the important contribution of private landholders and conservancies and will inform an investment strategy for the nature repair market. The Minister indicated that together with a method for permanent protection, the investment strategy will help channel investment towards projects that will help meet a 30 by 30 target that is comprehensive, adequate, and representative.
Leaning into leadership potential
The need for leadership was a consistent theme. We heard that industry and business must go beyond what’s required by legislation, or customer demand, and play a genuine leadership role when it comes to putting nature on the agenda. We also heard that landholder leadership is driving significant expansion of private land conservation uptake and this is poised to scale up immensely – if enabled with the right policy settings and investment.
Another clear message coming through both the Summit, and PLC24, was the critical role of First Nations leadership. Again and again we saw powerful examples of what can be achieved for nature and people when First Nations peoples and communities are empowered to lead. Throughout the conference, First Nations land managers, finance experts, and researchers indicated that to see this leadership grow, we need to do things differently; we need to move beyond the fear of failure – to not let “perfect” get in the way of “better”. We heard that First Nations should, rightfully, be seen as rightsholders not stakeholders, that successful partnerships must be built from trusted relationships, and that positive intent must translate to doing the hard work on the ground.
“We have to go at the pace of trust.” – Jamie Woods, Nari Nari Tribal Council
Accelerating nature investment
Accelerating nature investment and bridging the mammoth nature finance gap is a non-negotiable. PLC24 analysed the progress of environmental markets, the lessons of the carbon market, and highlighted current cases where markets are leveraging private investment and driving real outcomes.
There was robust discussion about the need to integrate nature-based solutions into corporate investment strategies, and how we cannot address the climate crisis without this. Corporate investment in nature-based solutions is growing, but there are challenges around regulatory frameworks and scaling up projects. Nature must be understood as is an investment class, and there is a need for consistent, aggregatable metrics to value nature's services. Emphasis was placed on the need for protecting existing natural assets, before restoration, and developing financial models that recognize and fund these efforts, especially for landholders.
As a formal side event to the Global Nature Positive Summit, ALCA hosted an investment-focused breakfast to showcase our sector’s proud history of delivering high-integrity, high-quality projects, with investment partners. Bush Heritage Australia, Bupa, Nari Nari Tribal Council, FEAT, GreenCollar, and INPEX Australia shared powerful examples of what investing in nature looks like today and discussed how these approaches can be replicated and scaled. ALCA also released Nature Now: Why Investing in Nature Can’t Wait, a report highlighting mechanisms for scaling private land conservation and recommendations for government, the private sector, and philanthropy to boost investment in nature action.
