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The joint use of similarity and suitability analyses/maps
can guide the targeting of areas within the four agro-
ecosystems for the dissemination and promotion of the
implementation of sustainable water and land management
interventions. It is anticipated that these will be used by
decision makers, planners and donors who seek to iden-
tify areas for the scaling out of sustainable water and land
management interventions.
Implementing sustainable options to manage agriculture,
forestry and land use change in targeted areas is expected to
reduce land degradation, improve productivity and contrib-
ute to reducing current levels of greenhouse gas emissions
and increasing carbon sequestration. Many of the techni-
cal options for climate change adaptation are available and
often provide central co-benefits for carbon sequestration
and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. For example, in
dryland ecosystems, decreasing the rate of cropland and
grassland degradation and halting the process of desertifica-
tion as part of a sustainable landscape approach will reduce
the vulnerability of small-scale farmers to climate variability
and extreme events and likewise prevents high amounts of
soil and biomass carbon loss.
The Ex-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT) is an
appraisal system developed by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO) providing
estimates of the impact of agriculture and forestry devel-
opment projects, programmes and policies on greenhouse
gas emissions and carbon sequestration. The net balance
of a project or policy is expressed in CO
2
equivalent
and considers all greenhouse gases that were emitted or
sequestered due to its implementation compared to a
business-as-usual scenario. The tool helps project design-
ers estimate and prioritize activities with high benefits in
economic and climate change mitigation terms and requires
only a limited set of time and data resources that fit well
to investment project and policy design processes. Up to
2015, EX-ACT analyses have been carried out in over 40
countries as part of cooperation with a wide range of stake-
holders, including the World Bank, Agence Française de
Développement, the International Fund for Agricultural
Development (IFAD) and the United States Agency for
International Development.
Sustainable agricultural practices in drylands that
conserve and increase carbon stocks in soils and biomass
lead thereby to especially strong synergies between posi-
tive livelihood and environmental outcomes. The EX-ACT
tool has been used for estimating the mitigation impacts
of the FAO-supported IFAD Family Farming Development
Programme in Niger. Within the project area, small-
scale farming systems are under pressure from prolonged
periods of soil degradation that are further intensified
through wood logging at unsustainable rates as well as low
organic matter inputs to annual croplands that experience
extended periods without soil cover. In order to reverse
the soil degradation dynamic and increase agricultural
productivity, the project invests in the scale-up of Assisted
Natural Regeneration practices that conserve and propagate
naturally occurring shrubs and trees on agricultural land.
This practice provides important benefits for maintaining
Support for long-term solutions
Since 2010 FAO, with the European Union and the Global
Mechanism of the UNCCD, has been supporting the
implementation of the African Union Initiative Great Green
Wall for the Sahara and the Sahel Initiative aimed at improving
the resilience of human and natural systems and to find
long-term solutions to desertification, land degradation and
drought, climate change and biodiversity loss. As a follow-up
to this successful cooperation, a new project, Action Against
Desertification, was recently approved under the EU-ACP
(European Union African, Caribbean and Pacific countries)
collaboration programme, to support implementation of
action plans in selected countries and expand activities to the
Caribbean and Pacific regions. Examples of success on the
ground are many: farmers from hundreds of villages, including
men and women, have been able to turn their degraded land
to production using native plants; guidelines and successful
practices are compiled and being disseminated for scaling up
action within drylands.
L
iving
L
and
a continuous soil cover, supplying organic matter to soils
and reducing soil temperature through shading. Besides,
degraded annual cropland is rehabilitated through the
practice of half-moon pits or demi-lunes that increase plant
nutrient availability as well as water storage close to the
plant root zone. Practices of improved cropland manage-
ment, afforestation of dunes and the establishment of living
hedges are further project components.
The FAO EX-ACT analysis indicated that through
these project actions a total of 6.9 millon tonnes of
CO
2
-equivalents will be mitigated over a period of 20
years. This is equivalent to annual mitigation benefits of
1.4 tCO
2
-eq per hectare. Thereby the project component
on Assisted Natural Regeneration provided the strongest
mitigation benefits due to its large scope. This analysis
identifies thus also in quantitative terms the strong climate
change mitigation benefits from sustainable management
practices in drylands.
Another example of the use of EX-ACT is the ex-post
analysis of the FAO Transboundary Agro-ecosystem
Management Project for the Kagera River Basin (Kagera
TAMP) in Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The
Kagera TAMP project lead to the scale-up of sustainable
land management practices such as agroforestry systems,
sustainable management of annual cropland, erosion
prevention on hillsides, and the increased use of soil and
water conservation structures. The EX-ACT analysis was
integrated as part of the general project monitoring frame-
work and required the monitoring and evaluation staff
to indicate the total area of achieved land management
objectives after project finalization. The EX-ACT tool was
then used to indicate the total mitigation benefits gener-
ated by the outlined activities, and allowed comparison
of the mitigation benefits of the various different project
components: Thereby agroforestry and afforestation prac-
tices could be identified as the most important carbon sinks
that are generated through the project, while also improved
management of annual croplands and grasslands contrib-
uted to the overall provision of GHG benefits.