The Project on “Strengthening capacity in the Agricultural, forest and land-use (AFOLU) sectors for enhanced transparency in implementation and monitoring of Mongolia’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC)” was officially marked its’ launch on July 3^rd, 2019 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  The Project is being implemented by UNFAO and Ministry of Environment and Tourism with the major funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) until 2021.  

It is known as the Landmark agreement; the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has an ambitious goal to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by limiting a global temperature rise in the 21^st century to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius (° C) above pre-industrial levels and even to try to limit to the temperature increase to 1.5° C.

The agreement requires all parties to communicate associated national commitments via Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). A country’s NDC establishes targets for sector-specific greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sinks, as well as intended efforts to achieve those targets. In addition to that all parties commit to provide this information on mitigation targets and efforts via national communications (NCs), with interim updates submitted via biennial update reports (BURs). Therefore, this project is critical to ensuring that the deliberations shaping those communications—particularly the NDC—are well informed and that relevant stakeholders are fully engaged.

As a Non-Annex I party to the Paris Agreement, Mongolia was one of the earliest countries that had joined and put its’ effort to submit Intended Nationally Determined Contributions in April, 2016.  The Article 13 of the Agreement describes a planned Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) in measures and efforts on climate change mitigation and Measuring and Evaluations (M&E) in adaptation associated with UNFCCC commitments. 

In many developing countries, the Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use (AFOLU) sector is often responsible for well over half of total GHG emissions. However, the sector also faces unique challenges in the quantification of GHG emissions and removals, due to inadequate systems and tools to measure, collect and monitor data, weak institutional arrangements, and insufficient human resources.

 Regarding to that FAO can play a crucial role in supporting countries to address such technical and institutional barriers building on its expertise in the agriculture sectors and its related capacity building experience in developing countries.

Main purpose of the project is to enhance the quality of information related to those issues by aligning Measuring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) practices with global standards.

The Inception workshop aimed to invite representatives of various institutions relevant to the enhanced transparency framework for action and support to measure progress and implementation of the NDC Mongolia to have common understanding on ETF and MRV in AFOLU sectors, CBIT Global Flatform, current status on National GHGI in AFOLU sectors.

In addition to that the key stakeholders learned more about the CBIT Project’s Goals and objectives and its implementation arrangements and put their inputs in refining and reviewing key measures for 2019 and extending initiatives on collaboration and outcomes.