Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry

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1. Introduction

1. Under Article 3.1 of the Kyoto Protocol, the Annex I Parties have agreed to limit and reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012.
   
   
2. The Kyoto Protocol makes provision for Annex I Parties to take into account afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation and other agreed land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) activities in meeting their commitments under Article 3.
   
   
3. To implement the Kyoto Protocol, issues related to LULUCF will have to be considered. Relevant issues may include for example:
   
   
• Definitions, including land-use change, forests, forestry activities, including afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation, carbon stocks, human-induced, and direct human-induced.
• Methodological issues, such as:
  • Rules for accounting for carbon stock changes and for emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from LULUCF activities, including:
    • Which carbon pools to include.
    • How to implement "since 1990," "direct human-induced," and "human-induced."
    • How to address the risks and effects of events such as fires, pest outbreaks, and extreme meteorological events; baselines; permanence; interannual and decadal climate variability; and leakage.
    • Accuracy, precision, and uncertainties in tracking carbon stocks and greenhouse gases.
  • Approaches, such as geo-referencing and statistical sampling, associated with identifying lands with activities defined under Article 3.3, accepted under Article 3.4, or associated with project-based activities under the Kyoto Protocol, and measuring and estimating changes in carbon stocks and greenhouse gases.
  • Verification procedures.
• Determination of how and which additional activities pursuant to Article 3.4 are included.
• How to link the first and subsequent commitment periods.
• Determination of how and which project-based activities are included.
• What improvements, if any, are needed to the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories and the Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.
• What are the implications of and what, if any, national and/or international sustainable development criteria could be associated with Articles 3.3 and 3.4 and project-based activities.
  
  
4. Therefore, to assist the Parties to the Protocol, this Summary for Policymakers (SPM) provides relevant scientific and technical information in three parts:
   
   
   • Part I describes how the global carbon cycle operates and provides a context for the sections on afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation (ARD) and additional human-induced activities.
   • Part II addresses important issues regarding definitions and accounting rules. It identifies a range of options and discusses implications and interrelationships among options.
   • Part III provides information that governments might find useful in considering these issues:
     • An assessment of the usefulness of models and of the usefulness and costs of ground-based and remotely sensed measurements and of monitoring techniques for assessing changes in carbon stocks.
     • The near-term (first commitment period) potential for carbon stock changes/accounting of activities in Annex I countries and globally.
     • Issues of special significance to project-based activities.
     • An evaluation of the applicability of the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories for national and project-level accounting in light of the Kyoto Protocol.
     • Implications of Articles 3.3 and 3.4 and project activities on sustainable development (i.e., socioeconomic and environmental considerations)