World Bank-developed soil carbon methodology gets international approval

A new World Bank-developed methodology to encourage smallholder farmers in Kenya and potentially worldwide to adopt improved farming techniques, boost productivity, increase their resilience to climate change, and earn carbon credits, has been given international approval.

The Bank says January 30, 2012 in a statement that the Verified Carbon Standard “approved this first methodology on soil carbon” which is a new approach for sustainable agricultural land management (SALM) practices.

The methodology was developed by the Bank’s Smallholder Agriculture Carbon Finance Project and ran by a non-governmental organization Vi Agroforestry in western Kenya.

The pilot, involving more than 60,000 smallholders who are farming 45,000 hectares of land, is run together with smallholder farmers and supported by the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund, the statement noted.

“Given the limited leverage of carbon finance for the agricultural sector to date, this is an important step in promoting linkages between agricultural productivity, adaptation and climate change mitigation,” said Joëlle Chassard, Manager of the World Bank’s Carbon Finance Unit.

By Ekow Quandzie