The MICCA programm was launched by FAO in 2010 to make agriculture more climate smart. It works to improve the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in developing countries and to enable these farmers to contribute to global efforts to mitigate climate change.

One component of the programm is the implementation of four pilot projects to provide quantifiable evidence that climate smart agricultural practices can mitigate climate change, improve farmers’ lives and make local communities better able to adapt to climate change.

The impact of two of these projects on green house gas (GHG) emissions has been assessed with the EX-ACT tool.

1) The United Republic of TANZANIA: the CARE International Hillside Conservation Agriculture Project (HICAP)

Taking place in the Uluguru mountains, the HICAP project aims at enhancing the livelihoods of smallholder farmers by promoting the adoption of conservation agriculture and developing institutional support systems for improving food security and conserving natural resources. In the region, current farming practices (slash-and-burn, annual burning of field sites and adjacent forest areas) are causing severe soil degradation. The project tries to reverse the situation through soil conservation, zero tillage and agroforestry practices.

The EX-ACT analysis shows that such measures, in the most realistic scenario, could avoid the emissions of 566 612 tCO2e over 20 years, i.e. 1,7 tCO2e/ha/yr.

2) KENYA: the East Africa Dairy Development project (EADD)

The EADD project is a regional industry development program led by Heifer International, whose goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of the dairy industry while lifting rural families out of poverty through more profitable production and marketing of milk.

In Western Kenya, in the Rift Valley, the assessment conducted with EX-ACT demonstrates the mitigation potential of the EADD-MICCA project. Adopting better feeding and breeding practices, developing agroforestry and improving pasturelands quality lead to the storage of 663 689 tCO2e during 20 years, which is equivalent to 4.0 tCO2e/ha/yr.