The Review Process

Each Annex-I Party' GHG inventory (i.e. both the CRF tables and the NIR) is subject to review by an expert review team (ERT), to assess whether it has been prepared in conformity with the UNFCCC¹ and IPCC reporting requirements. Specific review guidelines have been prepared for inventories submitted both under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol² , to ensure that the reviews are conducted consistently and in a technically sound manner. Each review expert must be nominated by a Party and subsequently must pass a series of specific exams³. Members of each ERT are then selected by the Secretariat to ensure coverage of all inventory sectors, and to achieve an overall balance between Annex and non-Annex I Parties, as well as geographical balance among them.

The review process under the Convention comprises three stages. Each stage complements the previous one, and ensures that the process as a whole provides a thorough and technical assessment of the inventory and of conformity with the UNFCCC and IPCC guidelines.

• Initial check (carried out by the UNFCCC Secretariat): immediate quality assurance check to verify that the inventory submission is complete and in the correct format.

• Synthesis and assessment (by the Secretariat): Part I compiles and compares basic inventory information across Parties and over time. Part II provides a 'preliminary assessment' of the inventory of individual Parties, for further consideration in the individual review stage.

• Individual review: international teams of sectoral inventory experts examine the data, methodologies and procedures used in preparing the national inventory. It is the most important review stage. Reviews are conducted as desk review (more inventories are reviewed by experts based in their home country), centralized review (more inventories are reviewed by an ERT convened at the Secretariat) or in-country review (a single inventory is reviewed by an ERT in the Party under review). If necessary, the ERT may prepare questions to the Party to clarify/complete the review. Then, the ERT provides a draft review report to the Party, containing a critical assessment of the inventory, constructive feedback and identification of issues that future review teams should investigate. After the Party has commented the report, it is finalized and published on the Secretariat web site⁴.

The review process under the Kyoto Protocol is based on existing steps under the Convention, but also involve some additional rules and procedures. As this review will assess the reliability of the emissions data used by Parties to comply with their binding commitments, this review is particularly detailed and stringent.
Among the additional procedures there is the possibility of adjustment, i.e. to change the original Party's data in order to make sure that emissions are not underestimated. An adjustment may recommend if, during the individual review stage, the ERT evaluates that the inventory data submitted by a Party are not complete or consistent with the IPCC methodologies. The Party must be always provided with the opportunity to submit additional information or correct the problem. If there is disagreement between a Party and the ERT, the Compliance Committee may intervene. In addition, problems with the inventory of emissions and removals for activities under Article 3.3 and 3.4 can affect a Party's ability to issue RMUs. If the magnitude of adjustments applied to a single activity in a single year of the Commitment Period exceeds 9%, the Party cannot issue RMUs for that activity for that year.
The review of the initial report (occurred in 2007) was in-country, while annual inventory reviews will normally occur as desk or centralized reviews; however, each Party will be subject to at least one in-country review of its inventory during the Commitment Period.