Rationale

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol requires the Parties (including the European Community, EU-15, and most of new Member States) to regularly report inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) anthropogenic emissions and removals, as well as to publish and regularly update national programs containing measures to mitigate climate change.

In this context, the AFOLU¹ (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses) sector is considered important to achieve the EU reduction targets, for example by reducing emissions of GHG such as N2O and CH4 in agriculture and increasing sinks of CO2 in forestry. However, due to the high complexity and uncertainty of this sector, quantifying and reporting its GHG balance in a variety of different situations across Europe represents an extraordinary technical and scientific challenge.

For the EU, DG Environment is responsible for establishing the mechanism for monitoring the Community GHG emissions and removals (Council Decision 280/2004/EC). The Implementing Provisions of this decision (2005/166/EC) explicitly assigns to the Joint Research Centre (JRC) a role of scientific and technical support in the sectors Agriculture and Land Use Change and Forestry.

¹ Following the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories, the AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses) sector will consolidate the previous sectors LULUCF (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) and AGRICULTURE. Note that while this consolidation has been adopted by IPCC, and the Guidelines have been published as a scientific publication, the decision of the use of the Guidelines for UNFCCC and Kyoto Protocol reporting has not been taken yet.

JRC The mission of the JRC is to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European Commission, the JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or national.