Do CCTS afforestation credits shrink if farming moves elsewhere because of the project?
Only if the move cuts carbon stocks on the land that receives the farming. Under tool BM-T-AR-0005, displaced grazing counts as zero in five cases, such as staying within the receiving land's carrying capacity. Otherwise leakage is the tree, shrub and soil carbon lost on that land.
Grazing that counts as zero
- Animals moved to existing grazing land without exceeding its carrying capacity.
- Animals moved to non-grazing grassland, within its carrying capacity.
- Animals moved to cropland abandoned within the last five years.
- Animals moved to forest, with no tree clearing or loss of crown cover.
- Animals moved to a zero-grazing system.
The calculation otherwise
- Biomass lost per hectare = [1.1 x tree biomass x (1 + 0.25) + shrub biomass x (1 + 0.40)] x 0.47, where 1.1 adds dead wood and litter, 0.25 and 0.40 are root-shoot ratios and 0.47 is the carbon fraction.
- Soil carbon lost per hectare = reference stock x (factors before minus factors after), using the BM-T-AR-0006 tables. It is zero if only grazing moves in, or if the result is negative.
- Add the two, multiply by the displaced area and by 44/12.
If you do not know where farming went
Use the mean above-ground forest biomass for the region from the IPCC Good Practice Guidance for land use, unless you can justify another value.
Limits of the tool
- It does not apply if displacement drains wetlands or peat.
- Market effects, such as changes in crop prices or supply, are treated as zero.
Worked example: 10 ha of crops moved onto scrub
- Tree biomass on the receiving land: 20 t dry matter per ha, no shrubs (illustrative)
- Biomass carbon lost: 1.1 x 20 x 1.25 x 0.47 = 12.9 t C per ha
- Over 10 ha: 129 t C x 44/12 = about 474 t CO2e of leakage, soil change aside
What Senseible does here
Senseible gives carbon credit eligibility signals from your records; it does not register projects or issue credits. It keeps dated, fingerprinted fuel and electricity invoices that a project's monitoring records can draw on.
Sources: BEE, BM-T-AR-0005 Estimation of the increase in GHG emissions attributable to displacement of pre-project agricultural activities in A/R ICM project activity (CCTS Offset Mechanism, version 1.0, 27 March 2025), BEE, BM-T-AR-0006 Tool for estimation of change in soil organic carbon stocks (CCTS Offset Mechanism, version 1.0, 27 March 2025)
Last reviewed 2026-10-25.