Besides bringing people together to celebrate the best of world music, art, culture and dance, WOMADelaide is doing great things with a strong protocol of environmental awareness through its management and staging.

Greening Australia is proud to have partnered with WOMADelaide to reduce the carbon footprint of the festival for almost two decades. Since 2007, part of every ticket sold has been invested back into locally tailored, diverse native plantings in regional South Australia. That’s created the WOMADelaide forests.

The trees and shrubs not only store carbon in their trunks, branches and roots as they grow, they also provide food and shelter for our iconic wildlife – extending the positive impact of WOMADelaide long after the music stops.

The original WOMAD forest planting site, and still our largest at 50 hectares, is located at Langhorne Creek between the Ferries-McDonald Conservation Park and the Bremer River.

This planting has now matured into a functioning Mallee woodland. Back in 2008, just 17 bird species were recorded in the young forest. By last count, the number had grown to 70 species including the threatened Hooded Robin and Diamond Firetail.

This Gardening Australia segment gives a great ‘drone’s eye view’ of this particular restoration site.

 
The land for this site was provided by Kelvin Candy, a forward-thinking farmer and landcare volunteer. Back in 2007, he decided some of his lower-yielding land would be better off given back to biodiversity: for the birds, insects, echidnas, kangaroos and unique local flora. A bold move, that resulted in a beautiful woodland supporting so many species.

Kelvin passed away in 2024. We are grateful to Jenny and the Candy family for continuing to look after Kelvin’s incredible legacy, which shows how individual decisions can make a big impact for generations to come.

The WOMADelaide Foundation have invested in a series of initiatives to keep the festival environmentally-friendly, such as minimising waste, reducing energy consumption and installing solar lighting (read more in our Q&A with the festival’s sustainability officer).

The carbon dioxide emissions from the WOMADelaide event that are unavoidable are calculated, including from transport, energy and accommodation. Greening Australia then finds sites in South Australia in need of habitat reconstruction, and designs and delivers projects to maximise biodiversity impact and carbon biosequestration. As the revegetated sites establish, the carbon dioxide sequestered increases quickly until the woodlands mature at about 25 years.

We attribute all the tonnes of CO2 sequestered to offsetting the festival. All calculations are made in line with the current Australian Carbon Credit Unit (ACCU) Scheme to ensure rigour and transparency.

All our plantings are planned and designed to benefit local biodiversity, including threatened species where appropriate.

Back in 2010, Greening Australia filmed the seed collection, plant propagation, direct seeding and planting of the seedlings for the WOMADelaide forest – watching it, you can see the effort we put into ensuring our plantings are locally suited, diverse, and high quality.

 
Once we’ve planted, we continue to manage the WOMADelaide forests to ensure they are functioning as intended and providing habitat for native species.

And we’ve found these plantings provide habitat for many native animals, including kangaroos, echidnas, and woodland birds such the Diamond Firetail and Kangaroo Island Glossy Black Cockatoo.

Besides habitat, the growing WOMADelaide forests provide other valuable benefits for people and nature too, such as improving water quality, supporting pollinators, reducing soil erosion, and helping regulate the climate.
 
The award-winning partnership between Greening Australia and the WOMADelaide Foundation shows what can be achieved if we all work together to reduce our impact and look after the planet – and each other. If you would like to explore partnering with Greening Australia, please send us an online query.

As a not-for-profit, we rely on corporate partnerships, government grants, philanthropic organisations and generous individuals to fund our projects rebuilding nature together. Please support our work and make a tax-deductible donation today.