Agriculture & Forestry Projects

VCS is a recognized leader in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, or AFOLU, sector.

Guided by the AFOLU Steering committee, VCS has developed requirements for crediting a range of projects and approaches, including a unique buffer-account approach to insure against the risk that carbon stocks might be destroyed due to loss events such as fire or disease. Today VCS is a leading global standard for crediting avoided deforestation projects, and the AFOLU Steering Committee continues to guide the development of requirements for new project types and approaches.

• ARR: Afforestation, Reforestation and Revegetation
• ALM: Agricultural Land Management
• IFM: Improved Forest Management
• REDD: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation
• PRC: Peatland Rewetting and Conservation
• ACoGS: Avoided Conversion of Grasslands and Shrublands

Developing AFOLU Projects

Requirements for developing AFOLU projects and methodologies are incorporated into the VCS Program documents. For greater convenience, AFOLU requirements have also been organized in two, separate documents:

AFOLU Requirements

AFOLU Non-Permanence Risk Tool

AFOLU Guidance Documents

VCS also provides three guidance documents on specific AFOLU issues. Please note these documents serve only as guidance, not requirements. All VCS requirements are found in the Version 3 program documents. Guidance documents include:

Accounting for Loss Events

Calculating the Long-term Average Carbon Stocks in ARR projects

Developing VCS Afforestation Reforestation and Revegetation Projects using CDM Afforestation/Reforestation methodologies

Additional Resources

Several outside resources are available to those seeking more information about how to develop projects or methodologies.

AFOLU Experts

A qualified AFOLU expert is required to assess all non-ARR AFOLU methodologies. Complete rules for using AFOLU experts are set out in the Methodology Approval Process document.

See the list of VCS-approved AFOLU experts.

Becoming an AFOLU Expert

AFOLU experts are approved by the VCS Expert Assessment Panel to validate methodology elements in a given sub-category. VCS is currently inviting applications for AFOLU experts according to the following schedule: