Last week, the I.P.Cert team had the honor of representing Ukraine and the “Living Cropland” initiative at the Conference on Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification of Carbon Sequestration, organized by the European Environment Agency and the European Space Agency (ESA).
For four days, participants, together with global experts, discussed the role of Earth observation in determining carbon sequestration, biodiversity status , and policy-making. The event was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, and served as a platform for productive discussions and exchange of experiences.
🌱Existing and upcoming missions from ESA, in addition to other international initiatives, focus and will continue delivering data and information about land dynamics, including land use and change, carbon stocks (biomass) and fluxes (photosynthesis)
🌱At EU level, LULUCF and CRCF have similar objectives of monitoring and increasing CO2 removals in the land sector. Clear difference exists for the scale and precision requirements but also in the conceptual development of MRV system. MRV systems should account for actual emissions or removals under LULUCF and additionality under CRCF
🌱Not only activity data (areas, ha) but also emission factors. Strong focus in country presentations on improvements in in situ reference data and on necessary improvement in emission factors. Suggestion to create a European level EF database
🌱EO data will play a relevant role in monitoring carbon removals, but operational applications will require the combination of ground data, modelling and the information from land manager
🌱 Interoperability requirement and use of IACS by Rafal Zielinski (EEA): IACS data provide validated information about agricultural sector but for LULUCF sector is still work to be done (spatial data harmonisation, semantics and interoperability)
🌱 Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon from space. Worldsoils: a SOC prediction system. Combining predicting and Digital Soil Mapping- Julia Yagüe (GMV): Continuity, comparability and operability of Copernicus products has been highlighted. Claims for new operational products by the audience were also proposed i.e. Biomass, wetland
🌱 The breakout group “Monitoring sustainability of CRCF” with Basanta Gautam (South Pole) and Frank Martin Seifert (ESA) as the Chairs focused on sustainability criteria of CRCF and how can EO support sustainability of CRCF. The key discussion was around presentations of David Gazdag (Verra) dedicated to sustainability in standards and Mila Luleva (Rabobenk) that presented the financial institution point of view and emphasized that majority of benefit should go to the farmers and local communities and additional benefits e.g. ecosystem services should be reflected in the price of carbon units. Also buffer pools for projects risks (10-35%) were discussed.
🌱 A dedicated breakout group headed by Antonella Succurro explored the critical role of benchmarking and uncertainty assessment in EO-based MRV for carbon removals. Through presentations and interactive “speed-dating” brainstorming sessions, we dived into the key challenges and solutions, aiming to define the essential requirements for a potential data challenge framework for EO MRV services in Carbon Farming and Carbon Removals.
At the same time, we should not forget to mention the conclusions about the EU political landscape: LULUCF updates and forthcoming instruments (Soil and Forest monitoring regulations) from Conference opening speaker Giulio Volpi and the second day speaker Valeria Forlin from the European Commission. The EU target is to have it open to start the certification progress in 2026, with the certificate registry opening in 2028.
A big Thank You to the organisers at the EEA and ESA in coordination with DG CLIMA of the European Commission: Lucia Perugini (EEA), Antony Delavois (ESA), Frank Martin Seifert (ESA) and Tobias Langanke (EEA)
