Nooshin Torabi - Carbon Offsetting Farms

Nooshin Torabi –Final

Transcription by Alice Bell

VISUAL: Nooshin Torabi. Working with Greenfleet, PhD candidate Nooshin Torabi is discovering why

farmers are volunteering their land to plant CO?-eating forests. RMIT University logo.

AUDIO: light acoustic guitar-led music plays in the background through the duration of the video.

VISUAL: Video medium close up of Nooshin sitting on a chair at the front of a modern lecture

theatre, talking direct to camera.

NOOSHIN: Hi I’m Nooshin I am a PhD student here at RMIT University.

VISUAL: Video tighter close up Nooshin, as before.

NOOSHIN: I am working on…

VISUAL: Video wide-shot of Australia bush landscape in low light, of blue sky, the camera is moving

forward across green grass and through the gum trees.

NOOSHIN:…social and cultural drivers of private landholders who participated in a voluntary carbon

planting and…

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin, as before.

NOOSHIN:…I have been interested in knowing why…

VISUAL: Video pans across scene of farming shed, 1980s model white Australian car, wood debris

piled up next to tree, trees in the background and low-level sunlight shining through.

NOOSHIN:…they voluntarily sacrificed part of their land for plantation…

VISUAL: Video old farming machinery in foreground, golden wheat crops surrounded by grassy plains

and trees and faint mountain ranges against blue sky in the background.

NOOSHIN:…and why they cared for biodiversity…

VISAUL: Video of the tops of trees shadowed black by the low sun coming up through the blue sky.

NOOSHIN:…and participated in such program.

VISUAL: Video medium close up of Nooshin sitting on a chair at the front of a modern lecture

theatre, talking direct to camera.

NOOSHIN: These landholders were participating through Greenfleet who is my industry partner.

VISUAL: Video close up of a person’s arms, their hands in gardening gloves, filling in the soil around a

planted shrub with their hands.

NOOSHIN: Greenfleet plants trees across Australia…

VISUAL: Video medium close up of Nooshin, as before.

NOOSHIN:…both in public and private land to offset greenhouse gas emissions.

VISUAL: Video close up of Wayne Westcott, CEO, Greenfleet, talking direct to camera, standing

against office background with indoor plant to his side, messy shelves with books and other objects

placed in around on top of them and pictures attached to the red wall.

WAYNE: So a critical part of the work we do is connecting to landholders who typically give us…

VISUAL Greenfleet promotional video 2014. Video pans across a group of men and women dressed

in casual clothing, hats and sunglasses and gardening gloves are planting shrubs in the coastal soil.

Some are using tools and there are a number of blue plastic watering cans spread around them.

Behind them in the background is the bay of an ocean.

WAYNE:…land and covenant that land, that is, protect for up to 100 years.

VISUAL: Four-year old Greenfleet forest at Battery Creek, Vic. Video zoom out to aerial shot of trees

of various sizes on the side of a forest.

WAYNE: So that’s a very big step for landholders and we do that with private and public landholders.

VISUAL: Video close up of the top of a husk of wheat with the blurred image of trees in the

background and bright sun coming up on the horizon which is then brought into focus revealing

machinery in the background.

WAYNE: Nooshin’s role has been to look at all of the elements…

VISUAL: Video wide shot embedded low in the golden wheat crops looking out onto the plantation

with trees scattered on the blue sky horizon

WAYNE:…that go into landholders becoming part of such a system…

VISUAL: Video close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, standing in office as before.

WAYNE: and to start to understand that on a broader framework.

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, a tighter shot taken from a different

angle to earlier, facing a direction slightly away from the camera as she speaks.

NOOSHIN: Working with them really helped me because I recruited my participants through

Greenfleet…

VISUAL: Greenfleet promotional video 2014. A montage of still images begins with a photograph of a

man and a woman smiling, wearing hats and sunglasses and gardening gloves, holding up small

plants towards the camera. Moves to photograph of four smiling women in sunglasses wearing

gardening gloves, crouching down in the coastal landscape surrounded by gardening tools and

plants. Moves to a photograph of a smiling man with his arms around two women holding a small

plant and gardening tools. Moves to a photograph of two smiling men carrying gardening tools with

the coastal landscape visible in background. Moves to a photograph of a woman crouching against

the coastal background, facing away with her head turned to camera. Moves to a photograph of a

man and a woman holding up plants with the shore in the background.

NOOSHIN:…so it was much easier me going door by door in the, you know, farms across Victoria…

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, as before.

NOOSHIN:…and I had this opportunity for me that, you know, that they introduce me, they send a

letter out to the landholders and they said that they support this study and it’s important for them

to find out, you know, about the landholders more.

VISUAL: Video close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, as before.

WAYNE: So I guess the core insight for us is that we obviously connect to climate change, to

biodiversity.

VISUAL: Video tighter close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, standing in office.

WAYNE: Her insights have been very much that landholders, although they are very aware of the

climate change component, they see the biodiversity…

VISAUL: Video extreme close up of wheat crops being drawn into focus.

WANYE: … that’s what they experience in front of them.

VISAUL: Video close up of old, rusted farm equipment surrounded by wheat crops with trees and

blue skies in the background.

WAYNE: For landholders it’s very important for us to use the biodiversity language….

VISUAL: Video wide shot of sparse trees and farm machinery against landscape of golden wheat

crops….

WANYE:… It makes sense to them because that’s what they’re experiencing.

VISUAL: Video close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, as before.

WAYNE: So even though we might feel that climate change language is compelling, it’s not as

compelling for them because their experience is what they see in front of them which is biodiverse

forests.

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, talking direct to camera. She uses

her hands to accentuate the main points of her message (the dual practical and scientific purpose of

research).

NOOSHIN: From my own personal perspective I think it’s important that as researchers we do both

things we do something practical and also…

VISUAL: Video time-lapse footage wide shot of wheat crops moving with the wind with trees and

clouds moving across blue skies in background.

NOOSHIN: …build a body of science so if we go either way and do not keep the balance fine…

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, talking direct to camera, as before.

NOOSHIN:…I think something is missing there.

VISAUL: Video tighter close up of Wayne, talking direct to camera, standing in office.

WAYNE: Now of course we’re not an academic research organisation but…

VISUAL: Video taken from ground looking up through golden grasses through to a blue sky peppered

with white clouds, moving with the wind, shadows cast across the stalks of the grass.

WAYNE:…we’re very keen to have researchers assist us to not only provide us with…

VISUAL: Video wide shot, angled up towards dark blue skies with scattered cloud, the sun coming up

over the horizon of grassy plains and spacious trees.

WAYNE:.. as with Nooshin a sort of insight into our work but also to give us a strong evidence base…

VISAUL: Video tighter close up of Wayne, talking direct to camera, standing in office.

WAYNE: …and you know that’s the sort of work that really you could only do through universities

and so that’s an exciting kind of cooperation that we’re keen to explore in other sorts of ways.

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, talking direct to camera.

NOOSHIN: I think it’s a massive experience it’s not within, you know, you cannot describe it within a

couple of sentences, it changes, you know, everything because doing a PhD is like above and beyond

your comfort zone…

VISUAL: Greenfleet promotional video 2014. Video of a ute towing farm machinery through green

grass surrounded by fog. A sentence is overlayed onto the screen ‘This is how it works: The seeder

plows line and drops seeds intervals before covering them back with soil.’

NOOSHIN:… it’s quite different from what you were doing as a business as usual so it really helped

me to develop a lot of skills, do a lot of networking, going to conferences, meeting new people…

VISUAL: Video close up of Nooshin sitting in the lecture theatre, talking direct to camera, as before.

NOOSHIN:…and then PhD students can demonstrate that there is something out there for their

industry partners not just for me to finish a four year degree and think about finding work it’s

something that I’m, you know, doing this PhD but I’m giving back to that, you know, that industry

partner to the community that they are involved with, I think that works very well.

VISUAL: Video tighter close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, standing in office, as before.

WAYNE: Working cross-sectorally, across sectors is never easy in my experience…

VISUAL: Greenfleet promotional video 2014. Montage of still photos of trees, finishing with the

sentence across the screen ‘Nowadays it’s a beautiful healthy forest.’

WAYNE:.. so the way that the research is presented typically has a different success factor than us…

VISUAL: Video tighter close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, as before.

WAYNE:.. so in the end we want landholders signed up. That’s what success means to us. That may

not be what success looks like to Nooshin.

VISUAL: Video aerial wide shot taken from the ground of the bush landscape moving up into the sky

over the land with the bright sun shining through on the horizon, the camera moves high above the

tree tops looking out across the vast expanse of green fields.

WAYNE: For her success it may be a coherent intellectual framework that makes sense across the

range of research that she’s doing. The art of this is to try and align those success factors as much as

possible so that when we cooperate, whether it be with a for-profit company, a large corporate, or

with a university research organisation that as much as possible…

VISUAL: Video tighter still close up of Wayne talking direct to camera, as before.

WAYNE:…the success of both organisations is aligned so that we don’t push in different directions

and I’m sure that’s the reason why this is such a difficult process to go through and why at the

moment it seems to be working very well with RMIT.

VISUAL: Additional footage kindly supplied by Greenfleet (Greenfleet logo).

VISUAL: RMIT University logo. www.rmit.edu.au. Aerial footage courtesy of Swarm UAV.

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