Forest-related reporting
in the context of
the
United Nations
Framework Convention
on Climate
Change
Claudio Forner works for
the Climate Change secretariat,
Bonn, Germany.
The National Communication is the main channel through which countries inform the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) about their activities related to the implementation of the convention. Developed countries have been providing National Communications since 1994. These countries should include information on their plans and policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions, as well as on all activities related to cooperation, capacity building and technology transfer.
In 1995, the Conference of the Parties (COP) requested that developed countries (Annex I Parties) submit as part of the National Communication an annual National Greenhouse Gas Inventory as the basis for demonstrating compliance towards their emission limitation goals. Of the 41 Annex I Parties, 27 provided a National Greenhouse Gas Inventory in 2001 - more parties than in previous years.
The National Greenhouse Gas Inventory is to be prepared following guidelines produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1996. These guidelines include a default method for estimating emissions and removals of greenhouse gases. They address separately the five sectors of human activities that influence sources and sinks of greenhouse gases: energy, industrial processes, agriculture, land-use change and forestry (LUCF) and waste.
In line with the guidelines for the inventory, Good Practice Guidance has been developed to assist parties in the preparation of their National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for all sectors, except for LUCF. The IPCC is currently developing Good Practice Guidance for this sector. Its adoption by the COP in late 2003 should ease the application of the reporting framework.
For reporting emissions and removals of greenhouse gases as part of the national inventory report, parties are expected to make use of the Common Reporting Format, a group of tables for setting out information related to each sector. The LUCF sector has been divided into four subcategories (changes in carbon stocks in forests and other woody stocks, forest and grassland conversion, abandonment of managed lands and emissions from soils) which are reported in five tables of the Common Reporting Format. Information to be included in the tables includes, for example, the area of forests under management and/or converted into and from agricultural lands or other uses (divided into biome type); amount of standing biomass and its carbon content used to calculate growth rates; and emissions from forest fires.
The production of the reporting guidelines, the layout of the Common Reporting Format and the reporting itself have faced technical difficulties, rooted in the complexity of the measurement and accounting of emissions and removals of greenhouse gases. These difficulties are evidenced by the low usage of the IPCC default method and the lack of reporting on forestry-related data in the Common Reporting Format. Annual reporting of forestry-related activities has also been substantially influenced by the fact that forest in-country inventories are not usually undertaken more often than every five years. Furthermore, given the difficulty of applying any national method for producing a national forest inventory to a standardized method for greenhouse gas emissions and removals, those parties that do not follow the IPCC default method are not obliged to report using the Common Reporting Format.
REPORTING UNDER THE KYOTO PROTOCOL
Under the Kyoto Protocol, a set of definitions outlines the eligibility of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities and land areas that can be used by countries in meeting their emission reduction commitments. These definitions include forest, afforestation, reforestation and deforestation; in addition, forest management could also be reported and used to generate credits, but specific rules apply (of which the most important is a country-specific limit or cap to the credits that can be generated from forest management). Reporting and accounting of LULUCF activities will be guided by a set of specific rules that were agreed on in Marrakesh, Morocco at the end of 2002. The so-called Marrakesh accords request countries to report changes in carbon stocks on lands subject to afforestation, reforestation and deforestation, and to ensure that these lands are identifiable so continuous reporting can be undertaken.
