Evaluating Project Claims with Remote Sensing for Climate Integrity

In a world increasingly concerned about environmental conservation and climate change, evaluating the quality and authenticity of sustainability projects is of paramount importance. While there's a growing need for projects that mitigate climate change, it's equally vital to analyse the claims they make. This article explores the role of remote sensing in assessing project claims and highlights its significance in ensuring high climate integrity.

Understanding Project Claims

Before we delve into the role of remote sensing, let's understand what project claims entail. When evaluating a project's claims, it's crucial to assess whether it accomplishes real, measurable, additional, and permanent changes that significantly contribute to climate integrity.

• Additionality: Additionality refers to the measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or carbon sequestration that wouldn't have occurred without the project's implementation. It helps to gauge the project's true contribution.
• Baseline: The baseline serves as the reference point or scenario against which the project's emissions reductions or carbon sequestration are measured. It provides a benchmark for determining the project's environmental impact.
• Reference Region: A specific geographic area or ecosystem used as a comparison or benchmark to assess the project's environmental benefits. It helps evaluate changes in carbon stocks or emissions levels within the project area.

Challenges in Project Claims

Project claims are not without challenges. Several issues, including geographic leakage and non-permanence, can undermine the effectiveness of climate offset projects:

• Leakage (geographic): Emissions reductions in one location can lead to increased emissions in another area, thereby undermining the overall effectiveness of the offset project.
• Non-Permanence: This refers to the risk that a project may not exist for its planned duration, and carbon could be re-released into the atmosphere.

What to Look Out For

When assessing a project, it's essential to scrutinize the project area, baseline calculations, and indicators of quality:

• Project Area and Reporting: Check for under-reported deforestation or forest degradation in the project area, changes in the project area during its lifetime, accessibility of forests, and the presence of timber plantations.

• Poor Baselines and Carbon Calculations: Ensure that allometric equations are used correctly, baseline models are robust, and the reference region is representative of the project.

• Indicators of Quality: Look for conservative baselines, accurate deforestation projections, and minimal non-permanence risk.

Assessing Projects

Assessing project claims can be a complex task, as project descriptions are often lengthy and intricate. It's crucial to perform due diligence to determine if project claims are likely, but it's equally important to avoid oversimplification.

There are many methodologies for assessing project claims, and most of them share similar concepts. Fortunately, remote sensing data can be a valuable tool in this process, providing extensive literature for reference and offering customizable risk maps.

When evaluating REDD+ projects (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), several factors should be considered:

• Additionality Check: Is the forest at risk without the project?
• Project Performance: Monitor deforestation within the project area.
• Leakage: Keep an eye on deforestation occurring outside the project area.
• Reference Area: Assess whether the proposed baseline is likely.

How to Review a Project

To review a project, you can use the Verra registry, where you can access digital files representing project boundaries. However, be aware that not all projects provide the actual project area, reference region, or leakage area. In some cases, you might need GIS tools to generate these areas.

You can gain further insights into projects by creating customizable risk maps, considering factors like proximity to deforestation fronts, population centers, rivers, roads, and topography-based accessibility.

You can check here our latest Orbify Review, which is a blog article series where we pick an NbS project related to the Voluntary Carbon Market and review it using our Geospatial Data Platform (GDP) to show how can people use and take advantage of our platform to analyse a VCM project or even to monitor and use the data to include in your PDD on the project development.

What Orbify Provides

Orbify offers a range of tools and services to enhance project assessment and monitoring, including:

• Forest Monitoring: Historical deforestation and post-project start forest cover monitoring.
• Carbon Stocks and Sequestration: Monitoring above-ground biomass and carbon sequestration.
• Risk and Non-Permanence: Assessing non-permanence risk and monitoring indicators like flooding, drought, and forest fires.
• Land Use Indicators: Categorizing land use, including monitoring aspects like oil palm plantations.

Assessing project claims with remote sensing can play a pivotal role in ensuring that the projects we invest in are making a meaningful contribution to the environment. By embracing advanced technology and methodologies, we can help protect our planet and combat the challenges of climate change more effectively.