Annual report: 2019-2020

Our Agriculture Initiative advanced a range of projects to support increasingly ambitious actions, policies and targets across the agriculture sector.

National Policy

• At COP25 the CCAC, WRI and Oxfam launched the paper, Enhancing NDCs: Opportunities in Agriculture. This paper is one of the 18 knowledge resources we produced last year.

Paddy rice

• We funded research by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) that Vietnam is using to design, finance and implement the low-carbon rice production technique - alternate wetting and drying (AWD) - as part of its NDC.  

• We worked with IRRI to implement AWD in Bangladesh. By early 2020, the multi-sectoral Focal Area Network (FAN) had worked with 13,000 farmers and cut methane emissions equivalent to approximately 19,500 tons of carbon dioxide per year through the adoption of the AWD technique.    

• $700,000 in funding from the World Bank, Coca Cola Foundation and Bangladesh Partnership was catalyzed to help FAN expand the use of AWD. 

Livestock 

• We worked with the FAO to strengthen Kenya's capacity to develop the Inventory of GHG Emissions from Dairy Cattle in Kenya 1995-2017, which applied IPCC Tier 2 methods for collecting data and calculating emissions.  
• We worked with the Institute of Policy and Strategy for Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD) to help Vietnam carry out a survey of mitigation options for livestock production identifying livestock waste treatment with biogas system as a priority measure in Vietnam's updated NDC. 

Open burning 

• Our project to introduce alternative methods to open burning in Peru, implemented by CARE Peru and International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), received the national "Antonio Brack Egg" environmental award.  
• Our “no burn” pilot demonstration project with the Punjab Agricultural Management and Extension Training Institute (PAMETI) recorded a 95% reduction in opening burning in pilot villages. No field fires were detected during the fall 2019 burning season. 
• We funded the first-ever mapping of fires in sub-Saharan Africa, and are mapping fires in Nigeria in greater detail.  This will allow for targeted mitigation efforts by the Nigerian government and agricultural stakeholders. 

Our Assessments Initiative develops integrated assessments to identify scientifically robust emissions measures and policy actions to reduce short-lived climate pollutants at the regional scale.  
  

• The process to develop the Initiative’s third regional assessment – the African assessment – was launched on 22 March, 2019, during a Ministerial roundtable in Accra, Ghana. The report is expected to be ready in August 2021. Over 83 scientists have expressed interest to work on the assessment.    
• The African Ministerial Conference on Environment (AMCEN) in Durban, South Africa, in November 2019 cemented the relationship between the African assessment team and the African Union Commission. It resulted in the landmark Decision 17/2 by AMCEN acknowledging the importance of SLCPs and the ‘need for an assessment of the linkage between policies to address air pollution and policies to address climate change’.  
• The report, Synergizing action on the environment and climate: good practice in China and around the globe, was launched released in September 2019. The report presents local and national examples from China and other countries that demonstrate the growing interest in and application of integrated co-governance approaches around the world.

Our Bricks Initiative continues to be the only global platform for sustainable bricks production. It provides policy dialogue and guidance to governments, capacity building for brick producers, bridging finance to scale-up change and identifies opportunities to engage with the sustainable building and construction sector. 

Latin America 

• Coalition training and support helped Colombia complete a model for transforming its brick sector that can be replicated in other countries and regions.  
• The CAEM project was awarded the Sustainable Development Goals Award by the Global Compact Network for Colombia and the Bogota Chamber of Commerce. 
• We helped the Colombian government develop its first portfolio of black carbon reduction measures for the brick sector, which will contribute to the industrial sector commitments under its revised NDC.   
• We helped CAEM finalize black carbon measurements in 2019 that defined 3 new emission factors, for a total of 8 emission factors,  for Colombia.  
• We carried out 1,779 person-days of training on clean brick production in Colombia, Argentina and Mexico.  
• Our partners held 3 political outreach events in Colombia, including a discussion between the Ministry of Environment and the national brick kiln association on complying with new regulations. 

Asia 
   

• Together with Greentech Knowledge Solutions, we prepared a skill development programme for zig-zag kiln workers in India. 
• Our Policy and Advocacy Network for Asia, facilitated by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), led to the State Bank of Pakistan providing preferential interest loans to Small & Medium Enterprises to convert traditional kilns into new zig-zag brick kilns.  
• The Coalition funded a manual for building induced draught and natural draught zig-zag kilns in Nepal after the 2015 earthquake. This led to US $2.9 million of additional funding from DFID Nepal to convert 360 kilns (60% of kilns in Nepal) to cleaner zig-zag technology. This led to a 75% reduction in carbon dioxide and a 41% reduction in black carbon emissions from Nepalese brick production. 

The Efficient Cooling Initiative was launched in 2019 to engage with leaders and decision makers to take steps that improve energy efficiency in the cooling sector – an action that could double the climate benefit of the Kigali Amendment HFC phase-down.
  

• The initiative held a high-level ministerial roundtable on the margins of the 31st Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol to discuss ways to accelerate the global transition to ozone-friendly, lower-global warming potential (GWP) efficient cooling. Hosted by Nigeria’s Minister of Environment, the event included high-level representatives from seven countries.  
• Together with Japan’s Ministry of Environment we developed and launched its Initiative on Fluorocarbon Life Cycle Management (LMI). The LMI focuses on an important management gap – end of life disposal of fluorocarbon refrigerants.
• A high-level ministerial roundtable on the margins of COP 25, was co-organized with Japan’s Minister of Environment, to discuss the role countries can play to accelerate progress on efficient cooling and fluorocarbon life cycle management. Countries were invited to join the Biarritz Pledge and Japan’s new Initiative on Fluorocarbon Life Cycle Management.

Our Finance Initiative provides training and technical assistance to financiers and key stakeholders to make investment in short-lived climate pollutant activities more straightforward, reliable, and attractive to the finance sector.  

• We provided technical assistance to Infrastructure Development Company Limited (IDCOL) in Bangladesh to help IDCOL standardize efficient brick kiln technologies under its Green Brick Programme. 
• We helped produce the Bangladesh Brick Sector Road Map, which outlines a plan to move informal brick production to energy efficient manufacturing.

Our Urban Health Initiative increased the number of governments committed to achieving WHO Air Quality Guidelines and helped build capacity in the health sector to improve air quality and climate change mitigation.   

International milestones 

• We supported the UN Secretary General’s call to governments to join a new “Clean Air Initiative,” with commitments from 138 governments to achieve safe air quality and align climate change and air pollution policies by 2030. This includes, “Tracking progress, sharing experiences and best practices through an international network supported by the Breathelife Action Platform”.    
• We helped launch the first International Day of Clean Air for blue skies on 7 September 2020. 28 BreatheLife cities, regions and governments participated in the day with video messages and stories highlighting their efforts to reduce air pollution. 

BreatheLife 

• 11 cities, 1 region and 1 country joined the BreatheLife Network.    
• Together with the Clean Air Institute and PAHO, we delivered webinars and an in-person workshop to support integrated air quality, climate and health planning in Cali and Aburra Valley, Colombia.  
• Helped Clean Air Asia develop a Roadmap for Air Quality Communication for Baguio City, Philippines that will be shared throughout the region. 
• BreatheLife and Clean Air Asia produced a benchmark report for 24 BreatheLife Network members in Asia.  
• BreatheLife and the WHO Urban Health Initiative, helped Accra, Ghana raise awareness about air pollution through media outreach, school programmes, capacity building, and development of waste separation programmes.  

Urban Health Initiative 
 

• The Urban Health Initiative, led by the WHO, developed guidance and tools to build capacity among stakeholders for improved health data collection, source apportionment and health impact assessment in Accra, Ghana and Kathmandu, Nepal.  
• Work led by the International Institute for Energy Conservation in India’s Gujarat and Odisha states, is demonstrating the links between smart energy management and air quality improvements to help create a new market for integrated energy efficiency, demand-side management, and renewable energy solutions. 

Our Heavy-Duty Vehicles Initiative achieved significant progress at regional and national levels in the move towards soot-free transportation. 
 

• Forty countries now have ultralow-sulfur diesel standards in place. This key black carbon mitigation achievement follows the 2016 launch of the CCAC’s Global Strategy for Cleaner Fuels and Vehicles and Marrakech Communique, in which 38 country partners committed to develop national plans for the nationwide introduction of world-class fuel and vehicle standards. 
• We funded technical workshops that led to the adoption by ministers from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) of a regional standard on imported gasoline and diesel fuels that limits sulfur content to 50 parts per million (ppm) from 1 January 2020. Domestically produced fuels will be required to achieve this standard from 1 January 2025. ECOWAS countries will adopt Euro 4/IV emission standards and limit the age of all imported light-duty vehicles to 5 years and all imported heavy-duty vehicles to 10 years. Countries have a 10-year transition period to comply. This decision will significantly improve air quality in a region where only 20 per cent of fuel is refined locally and 80 per cent is imported. 
• We are working with the East Africa Community (EAC) to harmonize vehicle emission standards. The East Africa sub region was the first in Africa to adopt low sulphur fuels and is set to institute vehicle emissions standards to clean up the transport sector in line with the CCAC's Global Sulfur strategy.  
• Rwanda adopted new vehicle emissions standards that were included in its 2020 NDC. The NDC includes measures to increase vehicle emissions performance of national vehicle fleets, including tax incentives, inspection, and scrappage of older vehicles. All newly registered vehicles must meet EURO 4/IV standards.  
• We supported the Sixth ICCT Workshop on Marine Black Carbon Emissionswhich identified appropriate black carbon control policies and discussed potential standardized sampling, conditioning, and measurement protocols.  
• With CCAC support, ICCT developed country-specific cost-benefit analyses and studies for Argentina, China, Indonesia and Nigeria. 

Our HFC Initiative continued to support country efforts to survey their HFC use, find cost-effective and relevant solutions to reduce HFC consumption and to enable the uptake of HFC-alternative technology. 
  

• We produced “Lower-GWP Alternatives in Stationary Air Conditioning: A Compilation of Case Studies,” a report that outlines 10 examples of alternative technology used in various countries and climates. The report is a reference guide for end-user and system purchasers on factors to consider when transitioning to lower-GWP air conditioning.  
• As of 2020, more than 35,000 transcritical CO2 refrigeration systems are in operation around the globe following the successful completion of our HFC-alternative technology demonstration projects in supermarkets in Chile (2017) and Jordan (2019). 
• Our SL-MAC technology demonstration project received the 2020 Environmental Excellence in Transportation (E2T) Award in the “Mobile Energy and Emissions” category for its innovative air conditioning system that reduces the carbon footprint of mobile air conditioning, improves fuel efficiency, and saves both automobile manufacturers and owners money on operating costs. 

Our Household Energy Initiative aims to increase the effectiveness of clean cooking, heating, and lighting programs to realize multiple benefits for climate, clean air, health, gender and sustainable development. 

Engaging women in clean cooking projects

• We funded work by Nexleaf Analytics and Rural Women Energy Security (RUWES) to test the usability of 5 cookstove models in 100 households in Mararaba-Burum village in Nigeria.  
• Nexleaf Analytics released the report "Scaling Clean Cooking Responsibly: Tackling Air Pollution Through A Woman-Centered Model in Abuja, Nigeria" which outlines the findings from cookstove usability testing. The report is a case study on how to evaluate stove models using a combination of sensor and survey data, and potential factors related to what women prefer for stove manufacturers to consider. 

New research 

• We funded Berkeley Air to conduct its study, "Emissions to exposure: modelling approaches and performance for estimating personal exposure to household air pollution," which aims to make it easier to estimate personal exposure from household air pollution.  
• We peer-reviewed and contributed to the launch of a second Berkeley Air study "Quantifying and measuring climate, health and gender co-benefits from clean cooking interventions" which drew on the CCAC-funded Gold Standard Black Carbon Methodology and will be tested in upcoming pilot studies by the World Bank Clean Cooking Fund. 
• We funded the SEI study "Enhancing clean cooking options in peri-urban Kenya: a pilot study of advanced gasifier stove adoption." The results demonstrate that pellets could be included as a cleaner cooking option. 

Our Mineral Methane Initiative continues to advance knowledge on emission sources, methane reporting for companies, enhanced mitigation ambition and regulations.  

Oil and Gas Methane Partnership (OGMP) 

• A new OGMP Reporting Framework 2.0 was adopted. It will serve as the gold standard for methane reporting by oil and gas companies. Current OGMP member companies, the European Commission, EDF and UNEP have agreed on the new Framework.   
• 60 new companies joined the Partnership. 

Methane Science Studies  

• We published two papers: “Methane Emissions from Offshore Oil and Gas Platforms in the Gulf of Mexico” and “Airborne Assessment of Methane Emissions from Offshore Platforms in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.”  Scientists involved in these studies presented the work at the virtual meeting of the European Geosciences Union. We also supported field campaigns to measure methane emissions from oil and gas operations in Romania and Australia. 

Technology Demonstrations

• We funded field work by Clearstone Engineering to provide mitigation options for eight flaring facilities in Colombia. At least half of the mitigation options identified will be implemented. One company agreed to follow-on measurement programmes to develop country-specific emission and control factors, and to identify cost-effective ways to prevent fugitive equipment leaks, casinghead venting at well sites, and flashing losses from production storage tanks.     

Global Methane Alliance    

• The Global Methane Alliance was launched at the UN Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit in 2019. Alliance countries commit to include methane reduction targets from the oil and gas sector in their NDCs. Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria were the first countries to join the Alliance.  

Regulatory support  
   

• Mexico is in the process of developing and implementing federal regulations to reduce methane emissions from existing and new sources in the oil and gas sector, becoming the first country in Latin America to do so. Last year, four workshops were held to build capacity to implement the regulations. 

The SNAP initiative continued to strengthen participating countries’ capacity to simultaneously reduce air pollution and mitigate climate change by developing and implementing SLCP, air pollutant, and greenhouse gas mitigation strategies.  
 

• Bangladesh, Mexico, Cote D’Ivoire and Togo have finalised, endorsed and published their National Action Plans to reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants. 
• We published a guidance document, titled ‘Opportunities for Increasing Ambition of Nationally Determined Contributions through Integrated Air Pollution and Climate Change Planning: A Practical Guidance document’ in 2019.  
• We have actively helped countries revise their NDCs. For example, with our support, a comprehensive analysis was conducted to assess Chile’s potential to reduce black carbon across all sources. This provided the basis for the inclusion of a 25% black carbon emission reduction target in Chile’s revised NDC compared to 2016 levels.  
• At the CCAC’s 2016 High-level assembly, several countries committed to develop black carbon emission inventories to understand the main sources of black carbon, and co-emitted pollutants. With our support, 10 countries have now developed integrated inventories of SLCPs (including black carbon), greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions. 8 more are still being developed.  

Our Municipal Solid Waste Initiative continued work with cities around the world to advance waste sector SLCP mitigation practices, including organic waste diversion, landfill gas capture and use, and open waste burning prevention.
 

• Since 2017 we have worked with Kenya to develop national and local solid waste regulations to reduce SLCP emissions. The Kenyan waste bill and policy has now been approved by the cabinet of ministers and sent to the parliament. The adoption is expected by early next year (2021).  
• We helped develop a Guideline for Bio-Waste Management for the cities of Bijeljina, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vrbas and Novi Sad, Serbia. The Guideline includes methods for determining the composition of waste, separate collection of bio-waste, as well as relevant treatment options that can realistically be applied in the South-East Europe (SEE) region. 
• We helped Lebanon’s Tyre region with an assessment to close an open dumpsite as part of ISWA’s Closing the World’s Biggest Dumpsite Initiative. A detailed assessment and quantification study of the site, using CCAC’s Solid Waste Emissions Estimation Tool (SWEET), was conducted and the results compiled in a report. Lebanon has over 950 open dumps and our project can be scaled-up and replicated to realize environmental and climate benefits. 
• We continued supporting cities through networks and technical assistance and have 117 cities actively participating in a global network and committed to reduce SLCPs from the waste sector