The Smallholder Agriculture Monitoring and Baseline Assessment (SHAMBA) tool is a free and simple way to assess changes in greenhouse gases from land use in tropical areas.
The tool has been reviewed and approved by the Plan Vivo Standard and is currently being used in Plan Vivo projects. The tool has also been used in peer-reviewed academic research. See here for more information.
The tool continues to be developed by the University of Edinburgh tropical land use team in partnership with several users and funders.
The aim of the SHAMBA project is to develop a greenhouse gas accounting approach for Climate Smart Agriculture in the tropics that is accessible to non-specialists and is applicable across a broad range of environmental conditions and land use interventions.
SHAMBA has been developed in partnership with several organisations in Malawi (FRIM, ICRAF-Malawi and Concern Universal), and with Plan Vivo projects in Uganda, Mexico and Mozambique.
The work has been carried out in collaboration and with support from:
- the Sustainability and Climate Change department at PwC UK and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation;
- the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security research program (CCAFS), part of CGIAR, funded by the European Union (EU) and with technical support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD); and
- the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) research programme, which is in turn funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The work continues to involve close collaboration with our local partners Plan Vivo, The Landscapes and Livelihoods Group, LTS International and Ecometrica.
SHAMBA tool 