OUTBACK CUTS CO2

Outback Australia's vast outback could play an effective role in the nation's fight against climate change.

A new study has found the area from the central west of NSW all the way up to Cape York, and then across the top end and down to the wheat belt in Western Australia, absorbs more than nine and a half billion tonnes of carbon.

And if managed properly, it could reduce carbon pollution by five per cent by 2050.

A new study has found around six million square kilometres of this country is also a massive carbon bank storing huge amounts of atmospheric pollution.

Explains Patrick O'Leary from the Pew Environment Group which commissioned the study: "Right now our estimates are that they're about 9.7 billion tonnes of carbon stored in the trees and plants of the outback. So that's in the roots, leaves, stems and so on and about another, well over a billion tonnes can be stored between now and 2050 if we can put into practice the right land management."

That additional storage would be the equivalent of taking seven and a half million cars off the road every year for the next forty year, and O'Leary asserts it's an effective and cheap part of a bigger solution but so far it's been overlooked.