Ex-Ante Carbon Balance Tool (EX-ACT)

EX-ACT is a tool developed by FAO which aims to provide ex-ante estimations of the impact of agriculture and forestry development projects, programs and policies on the carbon (C-) balance in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and Carbon (C) sequestration. The C-balance is defined as the net balance from all GHGs, expressed in CO2 equivalent, that were/are/will be emitted or sequestered due to project implementation as compared to a business-as-usual scenario. EX-ACT is a land-based accounting system, estimating C stock changes (i.e. emissions or sinks of CO2) as well as GHG emissions per unit of land, expressed in equivalent tonnes of CO2 per hectare and year. EX-ACT can be applied on a wide range of development projects in agriculture, forestry or other land use sub-sectors, including components of climate change mitigation, sustainable land management, or watershed development. The tool is cost effective, requires a relatively small amount of data, and has resources (tables, maps) which can help finding the required information. While EX-ACT is mostly used at project level it may easily be up-scaled to the program/sector level and can also be used for policy analysis. EX-ACT has been developed based on the IPCC Guidelines for National Green-house Gas Inventories completed with other existing methodologies. EX-ACT consists of a set of linked Excel sheets in which project designers insert basic data on land use and management practices foreseen under projects’ activities. EX-ACT adopts a modular approach, each module describing a specific land use, and following a three-step logical framework: 1) general description of the project (geographic area, climate and soil characteristics, duration of the project); 2) identification of changes in land use and technologies foreseen by project components using specific modules (deforestation, forestation, forest degradation, annual/perennial crops, rice cultivation, grasslands, livestock, inputs, energy); 3) computation of C-balance with and without the project using IPCC default values and – when available – ad-hoc coefficients. The main output of the tool consists of the C-balance resulting from project activities.