Today, at the LANDMARC project meeting, we had the opportunity to listen to the World Overview of Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT), a specialist in sustainable land management.
WOCAT doesn't state it explicitly, but like su-re.co, it is a network of organisations that not only collect knowledge but also use it to build capacity and manage farmers.
I wrote about the Earth Summit in my blog yesterday, and WOCAT was also created at that time. They have been working for 30 years and we've created a lot of tools. For example, it calculates the benefits and impacts of climate change mitigation measures.
A tool to monitor land-use change using data from satellites.
And this is the Sustainable Land Management database, which was the main topic of the conference.
Unfortunately, we could only find one case from Indonesia, but there are over 800 cases in the database. One thing to be aware of is that the carbon dioxide emissions in the database only count direct reductions. For example, methane from biogas can be used as a fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but this does not include the secondary greenhouse gas emissions from the use of biogas equipment.
For example, by installing a biogas system, you get organic fertiliser for free. This reduces chemical fertilisers, which are the most significant greenhouse gas emitter in the agricultural sector. The reduction of chemical fertilisers can have a more significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions than the reduction of LPG and firewood through biogas usage. LANDMARC will also study the reduction of greenhouse gases in this area.