The World Bank BioCarbon Fund promotes large-scale comprehensive landscape management through performance-based carbon finance in Zambia. A partnership with the Government and the Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) was selected as a promising institutional platform for pioneering environmental performance payments from REDD+ and sustainable agricultural land management (SALM) activities. COMACO and its partners intend to pioneer a unique approach to landscape-wide carbon asset management that combines several Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) methodologies under an umbrella of grouped projects to monitor, verify, and monetize carbon increments across the managed landscape. UNIQUE provided technical support to develop the baseline for the REDD component of the project by using remote sensing and emission factor data.

• Analyze existing datasets, remote sensing and farm inventory data.
• Establish the boundaries and activity data for the SALM and REDD+ component of the project.
• Analyze existing information to parameterize soil organic carbon models.
• Identify drivers of deforestation to model baseline carbon stock changes.
• Establish the baseline emissions for the project.
• Support to develop standard MRV system for the project.