What is AFOLU?
AFOLU stands for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use. It is the VCS project category covering land-based activities, and it is separated from the rest of the programme because land carbon behaves differently: it can be lost again, it is spread across landscapes rather than concentrated at a facility, and its measurement depends on biology rather than on metering.
That is why AFOLU projects carry additional requirements the rest of the programme does not, most notably the non-permanence risk assessment and buffer pool contribution — see non-permanence risk and the buffer pool.
What are the six AFOLU project types?
Each type describes a different relationship between the project and the carbon. Some create new stock, some protect existing stock, and some change how land already in use is managed.
| Type | Stands for | The activity |
|---|---|---|
| ARR | Afforestation, Reforestation and Revegetation | Establishing tree or vegetation cover where there was none |
| ALM | Agricultural Land Management | Changing practice on working farmland, including soil carbon |
| IFM | Improved Forest Management | Changing how existing managed forest is harvested or managed |
| REDD | Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation | Protecting forest that would otherwise be cleared or degraded |
| ACoGS | Avoided Conversion of Grasslands and Shrublands | Preventing conversion of natural grassland or shrubland |
| WRC | Wetlands Restoration and Conservation | Restoring or conserving tidal and freshwater wetlands |
The distinction between creating stock and protecting stock matters more than it first appears. A removal project takes carbon out of the atmosphere; an avoidance project prevents a release that was going to happen. Buyers increasingly price the two differently, and some corporate claims frameworks treat only removals as counting towards net zero.
How do you know which type a project is?
By what is physically happening on the land, not by preference. Planting trees on land that was not forest is ARR. Protecting standing forest under clearing pressure is REDD. Restoring a mangrove is WRC. Lengthening a harvest rotation is IFM. Changing tillage or cropping on farmland is ALM.
Projects near a boundary are common — agroforestry on farmland can look like ARR or like ALM depending on what is planted and where — and the answer comes from the applicability conditions of the candidate methodologies rather than from judgement. Settle it before the monitoring design is fixed, because the two ask for different evidence. See the land-based methodology catalogue.
Which types does Flora Carbon AI work with?
Our work sits mainly in ARR and WRC. The West Bengal agroforestry programme and the reforestation work are ARR-shaped: establishing tree cover where there was none. The Sundarbans mangrove work sits in the wetlands space, where our role is the spatial evidence layer — land screening and land-use and land-cover mapping.
For what those look like in practice, see agroforestry carbon projects and blue carbon projects.