Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Lessons from Plan Vivo projects
Nicholas Berry
Research Associate – Tropical Land Use Change
University of Edinburgh

1,047,049 tCO2
8,576 Smallholders
28,335 ha

9,645 ha, 2,437 participants, 95,000 tCO2 per annum
Reforestation 44.7 tC/ha
Improved fallow 45.7 tC/ha
Shade coffee 39.0 tC/ha
Intercropping 99.0 tC/ha
1,210 ha, 909 participants, 95,000 tCO2 per annum
Meisopsis woodlots 61.0 tC/ha
Mixed woodlots 42.0 tC/ha

Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Opportunities ¦ Challenges ¦ Requirements

Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Opportunities ¦ Challenges ¦ Requirements
•Full recognition of mitigation benefits from smallholder activities
•Recognition of linkages between smallholder activities could enhance mitigation potential
•Support can be channelled to a broader range of activities

Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Opportunities ¦ Challenges ¦ Requirements Technical
•Lack of information regarding mitigation potential
•Complex quantification for monitoring
•Lack of technical capacity
•Validity of simplified approaches Financial
•Minimal mitigation potential for individual smallholders
•Additionality
•High validation and transaction costs

Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Opportunities ¦ Challenges ¦ Requirements
•Greater understanding of mitigation potential from changing smallholder practices (more research required?)
•Flexible approaches to quantification of mitigation that can be adapted to novel systems (standardised approaches?)
•Full participation of smallholders in project design, implementation and monitoring (simple approaches?)
•Simple, transparent and verifiable approaches to track mitigation that directly benefit smallholders (activity- and input-based monitoring?)
•Potential to aggregate projects to spread transaction costs (scheme-based approaches?)

Whole farm carbon accounting by smallholders
Lessons from Plan Vivo projects
Acknowledgements
Wendelin Aubrey, David Burslem, Andy Ingls, Dorothy McIntosh, Alexa Morrison, Elaine Muir, Mark Purdon, Casey Ryan, Richard Tipper
Photo credits
CIAT International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Niel Palmer (CIAT), The Plan Vivo Foundation

Climate Smart Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa
Carbon methodology development
VACANCY
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Feb to Jul 2012
University of Edinburgh
Contact: nicholas.berry@ed.ac.uk