How to determine / exclude land use change emissions in FLAG?

Science Based Targets
1

It is hard to determine the exact land use change emissions of a product.
But if no deforestation/land use change has happened in the last 20 year, no land use change emissions need to be considered.
There are 2 ways to prove/certify that no land use change has happened in last 20 year: mass-based certifications (which are not necessarily or probably not for the exact product that you bought, but they show that somebody grew this product without land use change) and segregated certification (which really shows where your product comes from.

Are both of these sufficient to show no land use change?
My feeling is mass-based certification is not sufficient. But i can nog find anything about it in the GHG-protocol Agricultural Guidance, the SBTi FLAG guidance or on the Accountability Framewok Initiative.

2

Hi Tom,

I agree that if you can prove that for your product no land use change was done in the last 20 years, you don’t need to account for land use change.

The Land Sector and Removal Guidance (LSRG) draft 2 elaborates in par. 16.3.4 on Certification programs (p. 20):

  • Mass balance: Cannot support dLUC (direct) accounting; companies should use sLUC (statistical) accounting based on the known sourcing region or jurisdiction.
  • Seggregated: Supports dLUC accounting based on land management units associated with segregated materials.
  • They also address a lot of other certification type programs.

I hope this helps.

1 Like
3

Very clear !
And thanks for adding the references to the details and extra info.