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China has made great progress in improving food security for its population, but in some areas this has come at the expense of the environment. Faced with a lack of cost-effective carbon accounting methods, FAO, together with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the World Agroforestry Centre and the Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology, has developed a new “Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) Methodology“Provide Chinese farmers with tools that will enable them to manage livestock and grasslands more sustainably in the coming years. The VCS approach quantifies emissions reductions from a range of activities, including improving rotational grazing between summer and winter pastures, limiting the time and amount of grazing by livestock on degraded pastures, and restoring severely degraded grasslands. The approach is currently being applied to the Sanjiangyuan Sustainable Grazing Project to restore degraded grasslands in Qinghai Province in northern China. The average annual emissions reduction potential over the first 10 years of implementation is estimated to be 63,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
Until now, grassland carbon sequestration projects have been hampered by high measurement and monitoring costs. By focusing on monitoring practices, the VCS approach overcomes this major barrier, enabling farmers to access new sources of funding to restore grasslands, increase yields, improve household incomes and contribute to food security.
Taking into account the multiple drivers of grassland degradation, the new methodology quantifies emissions reductions from a range of activities, including improving rotational grazing between summer and winter pastures, limiting the time and number of animals grazing on degraded pastures, and restoring severely degraded grasslands. It also includes an integrated module to quantify any emissions from livestock leaving the project area.
Application of VCS methodology
Too many livestock lead to overgrazing, which in turn causes land degradation. This is the dilemma currently faced by herders in Qinghai Province, where the grassland degradation rate has reached 38%.
The Three Rivers project aims to restore degraded rangelands and sequester soil carbon, while increasing productivity, building resilience and improving livelihoods of smallholder pastoralist communities, with a new VCS approach at its core. In the proposed pilot, yak and sheep-raising families choose a combination of management options related to grazing intensity, grass species and animal husbandry that are appropriate for their specific land use. In addition, they have access to a package of complementary measures, such as the introduction of improved feeding, winter housing, and post-farm processing and marketing activities.
Helping herders through the adjustment period
This undertaking requires participants to think long-term. Overall, in the first ten years, herders will see a reduction in the number of livestock, but an increase in productivity. However, given that the current land surplus is about 48%, income is expected to be significantly reduced in the early stages, but is expected to increase in the following years. At the beginning, herders will receive compensation for their losses, which will gradually decrease until the tenth year.
After the first decade, households will be able to increase livestock numbers beyond initial levels without the risk of overgrazing. This increased feed availability will lead to higher incomes and greater productivity, and provide incentives for long-term sustainable management.
Improving resilience to climate change will pay off
Grassland restoration plays an important role in building resilience to climate change by improving soil moisture and soil nutrient retention. The Sanjiangyuan project is estimated to reduce the region’s carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) by 63,000 tonnes per year. This is how the project pays off: investment costs, including compensation for herders, grass planting, fencing and animal enclosure, will be financed through the voluntary carbon market.
The approach could be applied globally, particularly in grassland-rich countries, to sustainably feed growing populations while lowering their carbon footprint.
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