Carbon Benefits Project: Modelling, Measurement and Monitoring (CBP:MMM)
This GEF co-funded project (2009-2012), executed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-DEWA) and implemented by an international consortium will provide scientifically rigorous, cost-effective tools to establish the net carbon benefits of sustainable land management interventions in terms of protected or enhanced carbon stocks and reduced greenhouse-gas emissions. The CBP-system will be applicable at various levels of scale, from national level to the project level, made available freely as a web-accessible system (see CBP-A website).
Ultimately, the CBP-system will help project managers quantify carbon as a global environmental benefit in natural resource management projects and should enable developing countries to engage in the emerging carbon-offset markets with sustainable land management and land use activities. The system will be applicable across the full portfolio of land use projects implemented by the 10 GEF Agencies and will thus provide a way to compare and document their performance in contributing to climate change mitigation.
The official launch took place at UNEP and the lnception Workshop at ICRAF House, Nairobi (10-14 May 2009); click here for the CBP:MMM project flyer.
Official CBP launch - Press Event, UNEP, Nairobi (11 May 2009) (Photo credit: Mark Easter)
Project implementation
The CBP consists of two closely linked components:
Component A:
- protocol and model development, building on existing project and national-scale carbon and greenhouse
gas (GHG) inventory tools
- provide data for model calibration under alternative management, at various scale levels; IPCC Tier I
(empirical) to III (process-based) inventory methods
- focus on estimation and forecasting of carbon stocks and change and GHG emissions; greater
emphasis on cropland and grazing land
Component B:
- focus on field measurement and monitoring of carbon changes across landscapes, linking above-ground
and below-ground carbon measurements
- draw on recent advances in geo-spatial, earth-observation and field-based techniques
- special attention to agro-forestry and forestry
Both CBP components include socio-economic modules.
The measurement and monitoring protocols under Component B will be developed in 18 months; the modelling and capacity building work, resorting under Component A, will go on for three years when the project ends.
Within Component A, ISRIC will provide global soil information for carbon stock assessment across the range of world climate zones, soil types and land use - derived from legacy data. These are required for at minimum IPCC Tier I, or national scale, level inventory assessments using the new CBP system in data poor regions. More detailed data, derived from field monitoring and long-term chronosequence studies, are needed at project-level to verify projections of the process-based models; these data sets will be compiled and used for model validation by the respective test case partners.
ISRIC's input to the CBP may be seen as a sequel to its earlier input to the GEFSOC project on "Assessment of soil organic carbon stocks and changes at national scale" and a NRP-project on "Management options for reducing CO2-concentrations in the atmosphere by increasing carbon sequestration in the soil" (SOCNOP).
Participants at the CBP Inception Workshop, ICRAF House (Nairobi , 10-14 May 2009)
(Photo credit: Mark Easter)
CBP Consortium
Executing Agency: UNEP-DEWA
Implementing Agencies:
Component A: Colorado State University (CSU), USA
Partners:
University of Leicester
ISRIC – World Soil Information
Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura, Sao Paulo, Brazil
GEF field projects in Kenya (KARI) and along Niger/Nigeria border
Overseas Development Group – University of East Anglia (ODG-UEA)
The GEF/OP12 Gansu Capacity Building Project, China
The GEF Ningxia IEM Agricultural Development Project, China
Component B: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
Partners:
World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
Michigan State University (MSU)
Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Western-Kenya field project
Press releases and other materials
- GEF CBP Press Release (March 2009) more
- Overview of CBP project (April 2009) PDF
- UNEP News Centre (May 2009) more
- Green Economy Initiatieve Article (May 2009) more
- CBP News Item (June 2009) more
- Quantifying carbon as a global environmental benefit in resource management projects (July 2009) more
- CBP:MMM project flyer prepared for distribution at the UNCCD meeting (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 21 Sept. -
2 Oct. 2009)
- CBP Presentation (Nov. 2009) more ...