Presentation for CCAFS - FAO workshop Smallholder Mitigation: Whole Farm and Landscape Accounting
 27 - 28 October 2011


1. Whole Farm and Landscape Scale Projects for Smallholders
Carolyn Ching, Senior Program Officer
A perspective from a GHG program

2. Agenda
28 October 2011
•Part 1: What is the VCS?
•Background information on the VCS Program
•Part 2: Where are we now?
•Current strategic pathway for VCS AFOLU program

3. About the VCS
Framework for projects and methodologies
What is the VCS

4. Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)
28 October 2011
•Framework for developing GHG projects
•Established by leading NGOs (IETA, WBCSD, The Climate Group, WEF)
•Founded to provide a rigorous, trustworthy and innovative global standard for the validation and verification of GHG offsets
•Managed by the VCS Association
•Single focus – to develop and manage the platform (i.e., no consulting, no project development, no meth development, no validation/verification)
•Funded through VCU levy and foundation grants

5. The VCS Framework
28 October 2011

6. VCS Project Statistics
28 October 2011
•Registered projects
•Over 680 Registered Projects (21 AFOLU projects)
•Registered AFOLU projects in Colombia, Guatemala, Kenya, Tanzania, Australia, Canada, Belize, Peru, Brazil, Malaysia, Uganda, Indonesia, India
•Volumes
•Over 68 million VCUs issued (over 4.5 million from AFOLU)
•536 projects have issued VCUs
•AFOLU pooled buffer account holds over 1 million buffer credits

7. VCS Methodology Statistics
28 October 2011
•10 approved VCS AFOLU methodologies (18 total)
•Improved Forest Management (IFM) (5)
•Reduced Emissions from Forest Degradation and Deforestation (REDD) (5)
•11 AFOLU methodologies under development (17 total)
•Agricultural Land Management (ALM) (7)
•IFM (1)
•REDD (3)

8. ALM Methodologies under Development
Developer
Methodology Element
Status Update
The Earth Partners
Methodology for Soil Carbon (modular format)
Public Comment
GreenCollar Climate Solutions
Methodology for Agricultural Land Management: Improved Grassland Management
1st Assessment
Terra Global Capital, LLC
Calculating Emission Reductions in Rice Management Systems
1st Assessment
FAO
Methodology for Sustainable Grassland Management (SGM)
1st Assessment
Syracuse University
Adoption of Sustainable Grassland Management through Adjustment of Fire and Grazing
2nd Assessment
MSU/EPRI
Quantifying N2O emissions reductions in US agricultural crops through N fertilizer rate reduction
2nd Assessment
BioCarbon Fund, World Bank
Adoption of Sustainable Agricultural Land Management (SALM)
VCSA review for approval

9. More AFOLU project categories
Small-scale friendly
Key AFOLU Components
Cutting Edge Incentives
Where are we now?

10. New AFOLU Project Categories
ACoGS
•Activities that avoid conversion of grasslands and shrublands
•Eligible habitats
•Grasslands, shrublands, chapparall
•Status: Released, 19 October 2011
Wetlands
•Activities that avoid conversion and restore or/ rewet wetlands
•Eligible habitats
•Mangroves, coastal wetlands, sea grasses
•Status: Drafting, to be released late 2011 or early 2012
28 October 2011

11. Grouped Projects
5 April 2011
•Allows the expansion of a project activity over time within a specified geographic area.
•New instances of the project activity can be added during verification as long as they meet pre-defined eligibility criteria.
•Similar to the CDM PoA

12. VCS AFOLU Key Components
AFOLU Requirements include robust approaches to:
•Permanence: Risk Assessment and AFOLU Pooled Buffer Account
•Leakage: Activity shifting and market leakage must be minimized and accounted for
•Updated leakage requirements to be released for public comment and adopted in 2012

13. Cutting Edge Initiatives – Standardized Approaches
28 October 2011
•Steering Committee on Standardized Approaches
•Performance methods: performance benchmark for crediting baseline or additionality threshold
•Activity methods: Positive lists approach for additionality
•Building blocks for sectoral approaches and NAMAs
•Released for public consultation (period closes 30 October 2011)

14. Cutting Edge Initiatives - JNRI
28 October 2011
•Jurisdictional and Nested REDD Initiative
•Developing guidance and criteria for jurisdictional REDD programs to enable crediting at multiple scales (project, state/province and national)
•Create a pathway for projects to “nest” within larger scale jurisdictional programs
•Develop best practice nested frameworks that may serve multiple markets (voluntary, bilateral, pre-compliance, potentially compliance)
•Advisory and Technical Committees convened
•Draft guidance due in late 2011

15. -GHG programs
-Requirements for standardized approached
-Jurisdictional
-New project categories
-Methodologies
-Baselines
-Quantification
-Modeling
Landscape scale?

16. VCS Association
1730 Rhode Island Avenue, NW
Suite 803
Washington, DC 20036
www.v-c-s.org
Thank You
Carolyn Ching
Senior Program Officer
cching@v-c-s.org
+1 202 296 2312