Mathematica today announced that it will partner with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the international development firm ECODIT to develop a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions calculator for agriculture, forestry, and land use (AFOLU) projects. This publicly accessible online tool will help USAID and its partners synthesize and analyze vast amounts of geospatial data to estimate the climate impact of planned activities, policies, and investments. The calculator will also inform the design of future programs and solutions to meet the emissions reduction targets in the USAID Climate Strategy 2022-2030.
As development lead, Mathematica will deploy this state-of-the-art tool, which will use the latest methods for AFOLU emissions calculation featuring dramatic functionality upgrades to USAID’s existing AFOLU calculator tool created in 2012. Users will be able to customize their experience and access geospatial visualizations of their projects as they employ the updated calculator to estimate total GHG emissions from land-based activities such as forest management, cropland management, and grazing.
“The AFOLU sector is vital to economies across the globe, but it also contributes a significant amount of GHG emissions. The AFOLU emissions calculator will help USAID and its partners find opportunities to mitigate emissions from this sector while meeting development needs,“ said Tulika Narayan, vice president, climate change, Mathematica. “We look forward to supporting data-driven planning and decision making within USAID and the wider AFOLU community.”
Mathematica brings to the partnership with ECODIT decades of experience building online platforms and decision support tools. Last year, Mathematica developed a decision support tool for USAID’s Bureau of Africa’s Office of Sustainable Development that assesses the financial and climate impacts of alternative agriculture technologies to maximize agricultural and environmental outcomes. Mathematica also recently launched ClimaWATCH, an online data dashboard created to examine vulnerability to heat waves throughout the United States.
The AFOLU emissions calculator is the latest investment in Mathematica’s growing interdisciplinary climate practice, which seeks to uncover the reliable and precise evidence needed to measure the impact of climate policies, maximize investments, and improve public well-being. Mathematica will perform work on the AFOLU emissions calculator as a major subcontractor to ECODIT under a five-year task order with USAID’s Natural Climate Solutions division.
Visit Mathematica’s website for more information about the company’s expanding climate-related solutions and expertise.
Contact
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Colleen Psomas
cpsomas@mathematica-mpr.com