Isometric has certified the Savanna Fire Management (SFM) Protocol. The protocol outlines requirements and procedures for projects that shift savanna burning from the late to the early dry season, reducing methane and nitrous oxide emissions from fires and increasing the amount of carbon captured and stored by trees and woody shrubs.
Certification follows a 30-day public consultation that included feedback from buyers, suppliers, and academics. Full details on how Isometric addressed that feedback are available in the consultation summary.
Managing savanna fires
Every year, wildfires, agricultural burning, and planned fires burn ~7.7 million square kilometers of land worldwide. Tropical savannas account for about 70% of that area and release ~749 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) into the atmosphere.
Most savanna fires occur late in the dry season, when grass and leaf litter have dried out. Combined with high temperatures and strong winds, this produces intense, fast-spreading fires that burn large areas and kill trees. By contrast, controlled fires set earlier in the season burn at lower intensity, in a more patchy pattern, and with less damage, due to milder conditions and the landscape holding more moisture.
SFM projects carry out controlled burns earlier in the season, creating firebreaks and reducing the dry material available to fuel later fires. This leads to a less intense fire season and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Earlier burns also increase the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere by trees and woody shrubs, as they’re less likely to be killed by severe fires and face less competition from grasses.
SFM across northern Australia’s savannas has transformed the region from a net source of 19 million tonnes of CO₂e per year to a net sink of 3.5 million tonnes. SFM can provide employment for local and Indigenous communities and support traditional fire management practices. It also reduces damage from accidental uncontrolled late-season fires to habitats, people, and property, and supports the mix of burned and unburned land that fire-sensitive savanna species rely on.
The Savanna Fire Management Protocol
The SFM Protocol sets out how removals and reductions from SFM projects are measured, certified, and monitored. It requires projects to use a combination of remote sensing, field measurements, and default factors from scientific literature to ensure reduced emissions are accurately quantified. Projects can use any of Isometric's quantification modules to quantify the carbon they remove.
This protocol only covers regions studied in enough detail to ensure accurate quantification, including the miombo woodlands of southern Africa and the savannas of northern Australia. Additional regions, such as Brazil's cerrado, will become eligible as emission factors are published and reviewed by the scientific community.
Under the protocol, emissions reduction baselines are set using 10 years of historical measurements from the same project area. Because wildfire risk in eligible regions is expected to rise with climate change, a baseline drawn from past fire activity will likely understate future emissions, so reductions are quantified conservatively. Carbon removal baselines follow the approach set out in the Reforestation Protocol.
Projects must meet rigorous safeguards for people and wildlife, which are minimum conditions for eligibility. Projects must obtain Free, Prior and Informed Consent where Indigenous Peoples or customary land users are affected, employ and resource local and Indigenous communities, and build on existing customary fire institutions rather than replacing them. They must also publish how revenue is shared and monitor to ensure fires aren’t pushed beyond the project boundary.
Certifying removals and reductions
SFM projects can generate two types of carbon certificates:
- Reductions include methane and nitrous oxide that are prevented from reaching the atmosphere. A project can continue to generate reduction certificates for as long as it maintains its fire management practices.
- Removals include carbon dioxide that trees and woody shrubs capture and store as they grow. This carbon must be monitored for loss over time. Projects are only eligible for removal certificates if they demonstrate measurable tree growth.
The SFM Protocol was developed by Isometric’s Science Team with reviewers from the Science Network, an independent group of more than 500 academic experts. Its development was part-funded by Maki Planet Systems, an Australian climate technology company specializing in savanna fire management and carbon project development.
“Certification of this protocol is an important step towards unlocking the global potential of savanna fire management,” said Julien Gastaldi, CEO of Maki Planet Systems. “Australia has shown what traditional fire knowledge, science and carbon finance can achieve together, and our work in Botswana has reinforced that the real test is how a methodology performs on the ground. The opportunity now is to bring that approach to fire-prone landscapes across southern Africa and, in time, South America, backed by the credible international standards that attract investment at scale.”
As with all Isometric protocols, every scientific and methodological decision was made by the Science Team. Funding does not influence a protocol’s requirements, and certificates are only issued where an independent accredited auditor has confirmed a project is compliant.
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