Global Climate Change: Carbon Reporting Initiative

The initiative aims to expand the ability of USAID to report global climate change impacts for forest-based activities by developing and implementing a set of innovative tools with high scientific integrity. The AFOLU carbon calculator (ACC) is a key tool in this initiative, and under Year 6 of the cooperative agreement, efforts are focused on improving the ACC by updating data sets, adding new methods for calculating effectiveness rating, improving the user interface, and allowing for different levels of control by administrators. The tool will continue to be simple and easy to use, enabling the GCC Team and local missions and other stakeholders around the world to increase confidence in the integrity of results. Literature reviews have been conducted to identify new spatial and non-spatial datasets that can be used to improve the USAID tool. Specifically, efforts are focused on improving carbon stock and deforestation/reforestation estimates in mangrove forests. Winrock is working with the USGS to obtain new spatial datasets and updating current tabular databases with new literature values to improve upon the mangrove database used in the AFOLU Carbon Calculator. In addition, significant new information has been published on agroforestry systems, and carbon accumulation rates in agroforestry systems have been identified as one of the main gaps within the ACC. Two renowned agroforestry experts have been contracted to help Winrock expand the data base and review and improve the methods used to estimate carbon benefits from AFS implementation. The work on selective logging timber extraction rates is ongoing, with Winrock having contracted the Tropical Forest Foundation for compiling such data for the country of Indonesia. Efforts are also being made to identify consultants who are experts in tropical forest management and timber harvest rates to undertake this task for various countries and/or regions. Secondary forests have also been a focus area, with new studies on biomass accumulation in secondary forests identified. Information from these studies has been extracted to develop a database of aboveground biomass in secondary forests in different locations at different times following abandonment of the previous land use. The forest carbon stock map is being updated by Dr. Sassan Saatchi, and work is progressing on acquiring new data on deforestation for the period 2005-2010. The new data product is expected to be available by the end of August, and it will then be processed to obtain deforestation rates by administration units. The effectiveness rating calculation component is being added to the forest management tool, and a decision tool providing guidance to ACC users to determine an "effectiveness rating" for forest protection and afforestation/reforestation and agroforestry activities has been developed. The tool and background document have been submitted to several USAID partners in the AFOLU sector throughout the world for peer review, and the revised document will be submitted as a separate deliverable. A document describing potential approaches for estimation of GHG emissions from land use and land use change is being developed, and a background document on the effectiveness rating tool has been submitted to several USAID partners in the AFOLU sector throughout the world for peer review.