9Project area and eligible land

9 Project area and eligible land

 (1) The project area must include land (eligible land) meeting the following requirements:

 (a) during the whole of the baseline period the land was used for one or more of the following:

 (i) pasture;

 (ii) cropping;

 (iii) bare fallow;

 (b) the land was not forest land at any point during the baseline period and is not currently forest land;

 (c) there are no dwellings or other structures on the land;

 (d) during the baseline period the land has not been subject to the drainage of a wetland;

 (e) as at the end of the baseline period, it was reasonable to expect that carrying out the eligible management activities proposed by the relevant land management strategies will increase the carbon sequestered in the land;

 (f) it is possible to sample the soil on the land consistently with the requirements of this determination.

 (2) The project area may include land which is not eligible land only if that land will not be part of a CEA for the project or is to remain part of a CEA in accordance with subsection 17(5).

 (3) A project area, or area to be added to a project area under the legislative rules, must include at least one CEA meeting the requirements of section 17.

 (4) A project area may be varied under the legislative rules only if one or more of the following apply:

 (a) the first offsets report for the project under subsection 76(1) of the Act has not been submitted;

 (b) the variation removes only areas that are exclusion areas or emissions accounting areas from the project area;

 (c) the whole of the project area is removed from the project;

 (d) one or more whole CEAs are removed in circumstances where:

 (i) either:

 (A) the sum of the most recent values for View image in the official source from equation 27 of Schedule 1 or View image in the official source from equation 40 of Schedule 1 for each CEA removed from the project is positive; or

 (B) the removal is not for a purpose of increasing the credits issued under the Act in relation to the project area; and

 (ii) if land management activities in a CEA to be removed from a project have moved carbon from that CEA to one or more other CEAs that are part of the project—all the CEAs that had received that carbon are also removed from the project;