AgLED is intended to be a guide to climate change mitigation in agriculture and food systems for those new and old in the field of low-emissions development (LED). The focus is on agricultural emissions and their mitigation, but we provide examples and resources of emissions and mitigation options related to activities connected with agriculture. One of the biggest opportunities and challenges is in developing countries, where food security has yet to be met while also seeking to reduce emissions. Therefore, this site emphasizes developing country data and examples.
The site has a curated glossary and FAQ, as well as frequently used technical information as basic references throughout the LED Options, Estimating Emissions and Policy & Planning sections. The Estimating Emission and Policy pages have information relating to the UNFCCC and MRV process.
The Global Yield Gap Atlas consists of high-quality local to global agronomic data covering 13 major food crops across 70 countries. Data includes actual and potential yield and yield gaps; water productivity; minimum nutrient requirements; underlying data on weather, soil and cropping systems; and climate zones and technology extrapolation domains (TEDs).
Wageningen University & University of Nebraska
Integration of SECTOR within an MRV framework for agriculture. Although the acronym MRV is semantically ambiguous, there is broad consensus that MRV is needed to track the efficiency of mitigation options and to ensure transparency and credibility of results. However, the bulk of the literature dealing with MRV issues addresses its role at the national level for planning and implementing NDCs. MRV frameworks at project scale have only vaguely been defined at present.
The new features of SECTOR address some of the major challenges for developing sound concepts for an agricultural MRV framework. For instance, the diversity of crop management practices makes it difficult to account for them in the other calculation tools that assume one uniform practice in a given area. Given the significance of water regimes for overall emissions, mitigation projects will have to establish a solid baseline by recording the frequency of farmers following a certain practice that can then be compared to the situation at the end of the project.
The reliability of IPCC default values for point sources in agriculture (including rice fields) has recently been questioned. At the national level, the rationale for using one global default value is that local deviations in terms of very high or low emission rates will somehow level off at the national scale. As such, it is not really surprising that locally obtained emission rates deviate from the national–or global–default values used in any given GHG calculator. But this disparity between local and default EFs does not necessarily speak against using the IPCC approach as such, and only corroborates the need for disaggregation of EFs to be integrated into the GHG calculation. Since the wealth of empirical records on emissions has not really been tapped for GHG calculations in the past, it is hoped that the new GHG calculation tool with user-friendly inputs of local data may stimulate a broader use and sharing of GHG data.
Excerpt from: Wassmann et al. 2019. Introducing a new tool for greenhouse gas calculation tailored for cropland: rationale, operational framework and potential application. Carbon Management.
This map layer was developed using EDGAR’s data (5-min resolution) 2015 global agriculture CH4 and N2O emissions data layers (5-min resolution), which were combined using the global warming potential values of the 5th IPCC Assessment Report (CH4 = 28 and N2O = 265).
Download the methods (pdf)
Download the emissions map layer data (tiff)
Download the 2015-Ag emissions map (ppt)
Ciniro Costa Jr.
2021
CCAFS
This dataset is the result of an analysis of the mitigation contributions of the 177 NDCs submitted as of February 5, 2019. It is is a limited updated to the INDC database published previously. A full update is forthcoming for 2021. Data were collected directly from NDC submissions, which can be found here.
Meryl Richards
2019
CCAFS
This study presents a meta-analysis of CH4 database emission factors (EFs) from 36 field sites across Vietnam. The analysis for calculating baseline EFs follows Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier 2 methodology.
The analysis suggests that season-based EFs are more useful than zone-based EFs. These average EFs indicate an enormous variability of GHG emissions in Vietnamese rice production and represent much higher values than the IPCC default. Seasonal EFs from Vietnam exceeded IPCC defaults given for Southeast Asia.
This study compiled a comprehensive database of methane emissions from lowland rice production in Vietnam. The authors found a significant variation of rice emissions across seasons and landscapes. Therefore, it is advantageous for EFs to be determined for cropping seasons and systems separately instead of one annual EF for the whole country.
The variation in Vietnam’s climate and soil conditions means that GHG measurements could be taken across regions and seasons to establish a more representative database. More emission data are needed to calculate baseline emissions and quantify mitigation potentials of different management practices across regions and seasons. These emission factors will be used in Vietnam’s nationally determined contributions to the Paris agreement in their second update.
Vo TBT, Wassmann R, Mai VT, et al. 2020. Methane Emission Factors from Vietnamese Rice Production: Pooling Data of 36 Field Sites for Meta-Analysis. Climate
Evidence for Resilient Agriculture (ERA) platform provides access to data and tools designed to target which agricultural technologies work where. ERA is a dynamic dataset and web portal that is periodically updated with new data. Users can explore the database papers or use the en-suite analysis tool.
World Agroforestry (ICRAF), CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment (CCAFS), Partnerships for Scaling Climate-Smart Agriculture (P4S-CSA)
Curated by the International Rice Research Institute’s (IRRI) GHG Mitigation in Rice Platform, the MRV Toolbox provides links and resources for tools specifically for measuring, verifying and reporting (MRV) GHGs with a focus on rice. Tools include guidance and calculators for GHG inventories, mitigation projects, product-specific assessments, and evaluation of GHG field experiments.
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is supporting the government of Vietnam in an effort to increase low-carbon rice production as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC). CCAC has funded research led by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and CCAFS to help the Vietnam government assess mitigation options, develop an implementation plan, and measure its impact. A framework for Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) and support tools to help countries meet the reporting requirements for NAMAs is also being developed to contribute to Vietnam’s MRV system.
Contact: Catalina Etcheverry, Agriculture & Bricks Initiative Coordinator [Catalina.Etcheverry@un.org]
CCAC, IRRI, CCAFS
2014-Present
These free online courses cover topics in the areas of food and nutrition security, social and economic development and sustainable management of natural resources. All courses are designed for self-paced learning and can be downloaded. Resources and reading material links are available. Relevant courses include:
There are some courses that offer multiple languages and also some software restrictions.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
2019
