Background

After the Kyoto Protocol entered into force the 16 February this year, there is a strong need for the European Community to accurately assess its progress towards meeting its commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This holds true for both greenhouse gas inventories, as well as projections of emissions and removals.

With regard to improving inventories of emissions and sinks of GHG in the LUCF sector, a first workshop under MMC-WG1, held in Ispra in February 2002, recommended a series of activities, including a pilot project with selected Member States on learning harmonization by doing; final report and conclusions of this exercise were reported to WG1 at its meeting of May 17, 2004 in Copenhagen. In the meantime, the IPCC Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF is to be implementated, and a first series of submissions based on the new reporting format are available. A workshop with experts in LUCF reporting is suggested to discuss experience with the new GPG and to be prepared for the new submission due in 2006.

With regard to projections, a series or workshops have already been held under the EU Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Monitoring Mechanism for all sectors (e.g., Feb. 2002 for Energy), including agriculture (February 2003, Copenhagen) but excluding the LUCF sector. Accordingly, in the draft rules for implementing Decision 280/2004/EC, the mandatory and recommended parameters on projections proposed for the Forestry sector appeared to be unspecific and not well elaborated compared to the other sectors. Therefore, the CCC WG2 at its meeting of 15 Nov 2003 asked JRC to organize a workshop on improving projections in the LUCF sector.

For the LUCF category, inventories and projections of emissions and sinks of GHGs are closely linked with regard to the topic and to the experts involved. Therefore, the workshop will cover both topics under mandate of both Working Group 1 and 2 of the CCC.

Workshop Objectives

The first part of the workshop will focus on inventories, and will develop recommendations to improve comparability, transparency and completeness of reporting, and to promote the application of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF in inventory preparation. It is suggested that the workshop will dedicate most time on inventories, thus, in addition to the first full day, one session on the second day will be devoted to the discussions related to GHG inventories.

Areas to be covered in the first part of the workshop include:

Preparation of national inventories: issues related to completeness, consistency and transparency (e.g. what categories are already and will be included in next NIR, CO2 from soils?)

Experiences with new CRF tables in NIR 2005 and recommendations for more harmonized approach in NIR 2006

Advancements in uncertainty estimation. (Tier 1 uncertainty estimates are already available for all sectors but the LUCF sector)

How can we improve reporting at the EC level?

The second part of the workshop will focus on projections of emissions and sinks in the LUCF sector. For LUCF, it is important to discuss both scenarios of relevant activity data, and the use of models and various factors to develop emission projections.

As agricultural and forestry development is strongly influenced by EU policy and has strong impact on the LUCF sector, an important aim is to understand how common EU projections could be integrated with MS projections taking into account national circumstances and national policies and measures. Therefore, one area to be covered will be the review of relevant EU policies. However, it is recognized that projections are too complex to be fully covered given the short time (less than one day) available. It is suggested that the workshop discusses the scope of a workshop that will only deal with specific issues of projections, and a roadmap to develop practicable indicators for forestry projections, taking into account the need for comparable EU-wide information.

Interested MS are requested to provide presentations on their national plans regarding projections of GHG emissions and removals in the LUCF sector, taking into account EU-wide policies and measures and the availability and quality of datasets required for projections. MS with no experiences are requested to present their plans and approaches.

The main aim of the workshop will be to make recommendations to improve comparability, transparency and completeness of reporting, and to make the experiences and progresses made in some countries available to the others. To this purpose, it is foreseen to provide the presentations in the CIRCA database and to compile the contributions as extended abstracts into a single volume, for example in form of an EU-report, including the presentations on a CD ROM.

Invited experts / organisations

The workshop is targeted at experts who have direct experience and responsibility in compiling inventories and projections for the LUCF sector. The aim is that all Member States who are requested to report under the EU Monitoring Mechanism have experts present at the workshop, and that experts from both inventories and projections attend the whole workshop to facilitate exchange of information and experience. Experts from new MS and CC are invited to follow the workshop as observers.

The invitation is sent to members of the Working Groups I and II of the Climate Change Committee and to members of the EU Sink Expert Group. It is recommended that Working Group members and National sink experts coordinate and nominate the experts representing the Member State to attend the meeting.

Decision makers in the field of Climate Change are invited also to use the workshop as an information exchange opportunity and to deliver input for the discussions on further steps for improved procedures within the EU.