ABC-Map has been designed for non-commercial use by practitioners in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector.

The tool can be used flexibly depending on the different users and desired outcome of use. Users may include, but are not limited to, project designers and managers, planners and focal points in governments in relevant units, departments or agencies supporting climate, environment and agriculture sectors, agricultural public development banks, and farmer organizations.

ABC-Map is designed to support ex-ante analyses of projects, policies and investments in the AFOLU sector. The tool can be used flexibly depending on the different users and desired outcome of use. The use of information generated by the tool can provide important inputs to support, for example:

• Risk screening for a new project or investment through identification of climatic and geophysical risks and projecting future crop and livestock suitability.

• Preliminary screening of an investment opportunity and comparison of site selection options by assessing and evaluating potential impacts of planned actions on biodiversity and carbon.  

• Biodiversity safeguarding through identifying critical habitats, which supports compliance with biodiversity safeguards from institutions including FAO, GEF, and GCF.

• Balancing of gains and losses at project level through identifying possible synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation and biodiversity actions. 

• Tracking of nature-positive finance by conducting ex-ante analysis to conform with the MDB Common Principles for tracking nature-positive finance.

• Improving understanding of a project or investment area through showing past trends in land use, climate, biodiversity and carbon, supporting collection of information for planning.  

Importantly, ABC-Map seeks to guide users towards other specialist tools, and in this way can be seen as a first step to highlight areas where in-depth analyses may be needed, especially in situations where time or resources are limited.

ABC-Map has two key steps to performing assessments, which means that outputs can be obtained for two periods: the baseline and the project assessment, which can be used separately or in combination.

• The baseline assessment provides an overview of past and present trends in adaptation, biodiversity and carbon. It can be used to better understand the characteristics of the project area and perform a risk screening.

• The project assessment estimates the future impact of the project activities on the project area. It can be used to compare potential activities, and identify synergies between adaptation, biodiversity and carbon.

To perform a baseline analysis, the only information needed is a location to be used as the area of interest (AoI). The AoI is the overall area targeted by the project. It will be used to provide a baseline for assessing the project’s effects, if a project assessment is carried out, and must encompass all areas where interventions will occur. For example, to measure the impact of a project at municipality level, the area of interest should be the entire municipality.

If you also would like to conduct a project assessment, in addition to the location for the AoI, you will need to input: 

• Dates – the first and last year of intervention

• Location of activities within the area of interest

• Objectives of planned activities or investments­ – This is the target land use and management practices that will exist at the end of the project, as a result of the project interventions for each activity.

Yes, ABC-Map can be applied to any country. However, some regions may not be available at finer resolutions. 

ABC-Map is not optimised for mobile devices. We recommend using ABC-Map on devices with larger screens (desktop computers, laptops or large tablets).

The tool is applicable at all scales. It does not require specific data depending on the scale, as it uses globally available datasets.

Yes, ABC-Map can be used at any stage of the project cycle, but is especially useful for project design and ideation. 

If you want to report errors, missing data or if you are experiencing issues with the platform, you can report it to us through our feedback form, also accessible through this help centre. Please include as much detail as possible in your message. 

The area of interest is used to establish a baseline for your project. This is the area where you will be able to visualise past and current trends in climate, biodiversity and carbon, and establish the baseline to predict and compare the effects of your project.
The area of interest  needs to encompass all areas where interventions will take place, e.g. if you want to measure the impact of your project at municipality level this should be the entire municipality.

The discount rate is used to determine the present value of future cash flows and affects all indicators expressed in US dollars. Discounting permits a comparison of the value of money in different time periods, considering that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar received tomorrow. If you do not have a known specific discount rate, we recommend leaving the discount rate at the default value, which is zero.

The default resolution for ABC-Map is 300m as this provides global coverage and the most historic data (1992-2020). There are finer resolutions available however the coverage may not be global and there will be less historical data available so it may not be possible to compare past trends. 

You can add up to 30 activity plots in your project analysis.

The dynamic baseline shows a continuation of past trends, and static baseline keeps the value constant from the final year of available data before the project implementation period. Both of these values can be used to compare with the predicted project impact.

Yes, both positive and negative changes can be shown both in past trends and in future projected impacts.

ABC-Map was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with financial support from Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the Bundesministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft (BMEL).

A pilot version of the tool was launched in 2022, after which the tool was refined and officially released in February 2024.

The data source for the historical climate data is the ERA5 dataset from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. As for future climate, ABC-Map does not show projections for temperature and precipitation, but they are taken into account in the climate risk score. For the climate risk score, the datasets used are the ones visible on the IPCC Interactive Atlas. More information on the Climate Risk Score and the Toolbox it comes from can be read here: https://www.fao.org/3/cc2909en/cc2909en.pdf

The sources for all the indicators can be found in the ABC-Map Technical Guidelines.