Reporting Requirements

Under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, reporting information through GHG Inventories represents an essential link between science and policy-making. Indeed, GHG inventories provide the means by which the COP (Conference of the Parties) and the COP/MOP (Conference Of the Parties serving as the Meeting Of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol) monitor progress made by Parties in meeting their commitments and, therefore, in achieving the Convention's ultimate objectives. For the purposes of reliability, transparency and comparability, the UNFCCC has provided standardized reporting guidelines, in accordance with the methodological guidance provided by the IPCC. The scope and the rules for the reporting is different for Annex-I and non-Annex-I Parties and - depending on the sectors - may be different under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. Here, we will briefly describe the reporting requirements for Annex-I Parties.

Reporting under UNFCCC¹
Under the UNFCCC, all Annex-I Parties are required to submit an annual GHG inventory with anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all the direct GHG not controlled by the Montreal Protocol (CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6). These submission comprises the Common Reporting Form tables (CRF, i.e standardized tables with estimates for the whole time series) and the National Inventory Report (NIR, i.e. a comprehensive description of the methods/data used and the rationale for their selection, including information on uncertainties, recalculations and on QA/QC procedures). In preparing their inventories, Parties should pursue the following general principles:

• Transparency, i.e. the assumptions and methodologies used for an estimate should be clearly explained so that anybody could verify its correctness. Emissions and removals should be reported at the most disaggregated level of each source/sink category.

• Consistency, i.e. the same methodologies and data sets should be used along time. Estimates using different methodologies for different years, as well as recalculations of previously submitted data, can be considered consistent if they improve accuracy and/or completeness and are documented in a transparent manner.

• Comparability across countries. For this purpose, Parties should follow the methodologies and formats prescribed by the IPCC² and adopted by the COP.

• Completeness, meaning that estimates should include - for all the relevant geographical coverage - all the agreed sources/sinks and gases. When gaps exist, all the relevant information on these gaps should be documented in a transparent manner.

• Accuracy, in the sense that estimates should be systematically neither over nor under the true value, so far as can be judged, and that uncertainties are reduced so far as is practicable. Quantify the uncertainties is important both to assess the quality of the estimates and to help prioritizing future efforts to improve the accuracy of the inventory.

The IPCC provides a common structure for categorizing Sectors, including AGRICULTURE (mainly CH4 and NO2 emissions from human-induced biological processes) and LULUCF (mainly CO2 removal from land use, land use change and forestry activities)³ . Different estimation methods (i.e., 3 "tiers" of increasing quality and decreasing uncertainty in estimates) may be used, and Parties should give priority to those methods which, according to the IPCC, produce more accurate estimates. Parties shall identify their "key categories" (i.e. those categories most relevant in terms of emission level or trend), which should be prioritized and estimated with the higher tiers. Furthermore, Parties are encouraged to use national methodologies to improve accuracy of the estimates, provided that these methodologies are well documented and scientifically based. Additional requirements for reporting emissions/removals from the LULUCF sector are described by IPCC Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF (IPCC-GPG)⁴ and include:

• The reporting must follow six main land-use categories: Forest land, Cropland, Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements, Other land. Each category is further divided into two subsections based on the status and recent history of land-use: land category remaining in the same land category and land converted to the land-use category in question (for a defined period, needed for carbon pools to reach the level of the new category). Following IPCC GPG, appropriate information on approaches used for representing land areas, and on the land-use definitions and databases utilized.

• Estimates of emission/removals should be provided for five different carbon pools: aboveground biomass, belowground biomass, dead wood, litter, soil organic carbon.

Reporting and accounting under the Kyoto Protocol⁵
The inclusion of the LULUCF sector in the Kyoto Protocol (i.e. the possibility for Annex-I Parties to use LULUCF activities to meet their emission reduction targets) has been one of the most contentious and difficult issues in the international climate change negotiations. The reasons of this controversy are due the inherent high complexity of LULUCF sector, which raises a number of issues such as: uncertainty in the emission/removal estimates, additionality (i.e. how to distinguish the human-induced effect from a highly variable natural background), permanence (i.e. stability of carbon stocks) and saturation of the sink capacity. In addition, the negotiation process was further complicated by the fact that the emission reduction targets in the Kyoto Protocol were set before (1997) than the rules for the LULUCF sector were agreed at COP 7 in Marrakech (2001). The outcome was therefore a complex compromise between the expectation of flexibility from LULUCF and the wish to preserve the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol. The general rules are now contained in the COP/MOP decision on LULUCF, which affirms the general principles, adopts the definitions, modalities and rules relating the LULUCF activities, and decides that estimation and reporting must be consistent with the IPCC-GPG. Unlike the reporting under the Convention, which includes all emissions/removals from LULUCF, the Kyoto Protocol restricts the mandatory accounting to the emissions/removals from human-induced Afforestation/ Reforestation/ Deforestation (ARD) activities since 1990 (Art. 3.3). In addition, Parties may elect to include emissions/removals from any of the following human-induced activities since 1990 (Art. 3.4): Forest management, Cropland management, Grazing-land management and Revegetation (Parties elected activities here). Parties must provide information on 3.3 and elected 3.4 activities in their initial report under the Kyoto Protocol and in their annual reports during the Commitment period (2008-2012). The initial report, due by 1/1/2007, must contain information on the parameters chosen by the Party to define a "forest" under KP, on the activities elected under Art. 3.4 and on the chosen accounting frequency (annual or at the end of the Commitment Period). The annual report must contain the GHG inventory - following specific KP LULUCF CRF tables⁶ -, any related methodological information and the calculation of the accounting quantity for each activity. This information - which is supplementary to that reported under the Convention - will be the basis for assessing compliance in meeting emission targets and will be essential for participation in the Kyoto mechanisms (emissions trading, joint implementation, clean development mechanism).
In contrast to emissions from other sectors, the Kyoto Protocol requires Parties to account for emissions and removals from LULUCF activities by adding to or subtracting from their initial assigned amount, i.e. the allowable level of emissions of a Party for the Commitment Period 2008-2012⁷ . Net removals from LULUCF activities result in the issuance of additional emission allowances, called removal units or RMUs, which a Party may add to its assigned amount; on the other hand, net emissions from LULUCF activities must accounted by canceling assigned amount units. Calculation of the quantity of emission allowances to be issued or cancelled is subject to specific rules, which differ for each LULUCF activity.