FAO launches “ABC-Map” geospatial app to boost country capacity to confront climate change
19 January 2024, Rome, Italy - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has today launched an all-in-one tool to assess the environmental impact of projects and investments in the agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU) sector.
The FAO Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment (OCB) developed the geospatial app, the Adaptation, Biodiversity and Carbon Mapping Tool (ABC-Map), with funding from the French Development Agency (AFD) and the German Ministry of Agriculture (BMEL).
FAO Senior Natural Resources Officer (Climate Change) Martial Bernoux says ABC-Map answers a real need: “With the world facing three crises that threaten its existence, climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation, we need to improve understanding of vulnerabilities in different regions and the impacts of interventions to confront these crises. Sound climate data and information are essential for guiding effective action. ABC-Map provides these.”
How does it work?
ABC-Map is an open-source satellite imagery app, based on Google Earth Engine, with information from global datasets including the World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA), land cover data sets from the European Space Agency and climate data from the ERA5 dataset.
The tool features indicators in three sections: adaptation, biodiversity, and carbon. In so doing, it fills a gap in the field. Previous tools focused on one or two of these themes, but not all. A user inputs details such as the location and duration of a project under consideration.
The adaptation section gives climate data, including past temperature and rainfall trends, and geophysical data, such as slope and elevation, to demonstrate the vulnerability to climate change of a given area and to assess climate change over time in that location.
The biodiversity section of ABC-Map provides data on average species abundance, ecosystem services, land use change, protected areas and key biodiversity areas. This gives a view of the pressures and impacts on biodiversity.
ABC-Map’s carbon section gives information on the carbon reduction potential of a planned intervention. It shows changes in carbon stocks in soils and vegetation, and the social value of carbon, which is the monetary value of damage caused by the emission of additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The tool does not require a user to have a technical background or to input detailed information. ABC-Map calculates the impact of planned activities typed into the tool in just a few seconds.
Strengthening national capacity
ABC-Map is aimed at policymakers, project designers and technicians, to help them understand the trade-offs, synergies and impacts of a project, plan or policy, in terms of climate change mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity and/or land restoration.
ABC-Map will help nations fulfill their obligations under the three Rio Conventions, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By enabling them to assess risks and vulnerability and the impact of planned actions, it is hoped this will strengthen their capacity to confront climate change.
IFAD uses ABC-Map to monitor the impact of the Fund’s projects on biodiversity, by measuring its own Biodiversity Core Indicator. IFAD Senior Biodiversity Specialist Marie Aude Even says it assists project staff with crucial data: “ABC-Map allows IFAD to be among the first development banks to adopt an ecosystem indicator, the Biodiversity Core Indicator, to review biodiversity impact across our projects, in line with the fund's target of committing 30% of climate finance towards nature-based solutions by 2030. The dynamic and integrated platform provides key data to support project staff with modelling impacts, designing biodiversity-positive activities and contributing to safeguards assessments.”
FAST launch
FAO Deputy Director-General Maria Helena Semedo announced the launch of ABC-Map on 19 January, during an expert panel on the Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Partnership, at the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture in Berlin, Germany. The FAST multi-stakeholder partnership aims to improve the quantity and quality of climate finance going to agrifood systems, ensuring it reaches the most vulnerable, including family farmers.
The launch takes place just a few weeks after the announcement of the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action at COP28, endorsed by 159 nations, committing to adapt and transform agrifood systems to respond to climate change.
ABC-Map is one of the technical tools in the COP28 Agriculture, Food and Climate National Action Toolkit, helping governments in developing and implementing policy measures to accelerate and align national efforts on climate action and agrifood system transformation.
The work on the app will continue over the next year, with the addition of new indicators and the ability to download results in a PDF report with graphs and text to assist interpretation. Users will also be able to sign into the app, which will assist in generating analytics and permit reporting on target projects.
A webinar with guidance on using ABC-Map will take place online on Wednesday 7 February 2024 at 15:00 (CET). Please register via this link.
Related links
ABC-Map: http://abc-map.org/
External webinar: Registration - Zoom
COP28 Agriculture, Food and Climate National Action Toolkit: https://www.fao.org/3/cc9049en/cc9049en.pdf