Mathematica Global is working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and ECODIT to develop a new greenhouse gas emissions calculator that can estimate the climate impact of planned activities, policies, and investments. This tool will provide insights for the design of future programs and solutions to meet the emissions reduction targets in the USAID Climate Strategy 2022–2030.

Learning Priority

The USAID Climate Strategy 2022–2030 sets out ambitious climate targets motivated by the Agency’s vision of a resilient, prosperous, and equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. To make progress towards these targets, USAID and its partners need visibility into emissions when planning activities. The Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator will be a key planning tool, allowing USAID and its partners to assess the potential emissions across programmatic scenarios and use the resulting evidence to optimize their work.

The agriculture, forestry, and land use (AFOLU) sectors play an important role in emissions reduction, accounting for roughly one quarter of emissions globally. The insights generated by the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Calculator will help USAID and its partners understand, plan, and adapt activities in AFLOU sectors to move toward the Agency’s targets.

Measurement Approach

Mathematica Global and its partner ECODIT are developing a state-of-the-art tool that will update the existing AFOLU calculator created in 2012. These updates will include geospatial visualizations of users’ projects in the AFLOU sectors and provide an estimate of total emissions from land-based activities. Users will be able to input site- or activity-specific data and leverage available geospatial datasets to report on and visualize greenhouse gas emissions.