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There are two types of issues for consideration: issues that affect changes in carbon stocks, and those that relate to the quality of the stock estimates. The UNFCCC has developed terms to describe quality of inventories as transparency, consistency, completeness, and accuracy (FCCC, 1999). A third category of issues relates to project and national reporting. These latter issues tend to be scale-dependent and project-specific. The issues are grouped as follows:
These issues are summarized in Tables 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3.
| Table 6-1: Issues related to changes in carbon stocks at the national level. | ||
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| Issue |
Question
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National Reporting
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| Changes in carbon stocks | How do the Guidelines report changes in carbon stocks? | The Workbook method estimates the rate of change of land use and aboveground biomass in forests, other woody biomass stocks, and soil carbon. Changes in carbon stock are used to derive emissions and removals of CO2. There are no glossary definitions for carbon flows, fluxes, stocks, emissions, and removals. |
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| ARD (Article 3.3) | How do the Guidelines capture ARD? | Glossary definitions exist for afforestation and reforestation; deforestation is referred to as forest conversion. For accounting purposes, there is no distinction between afforestation and reforestation for changes in aboveground biomass. The same module is used for afforestation and reforestation. All three activities are potentially covered by the methods. |
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| Additional activities (Article 3.4) | How might the Guidelines potentially capture additional activities? | In principle, the accounting framework in the Reference Manual could be adapted to capture most additional activities by changing the input and tillage factors where changes in soil changes are expected. For some practices, these factors are not provided. |
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| Full carbon accounting | Do the Guidelines account for all changes in carbon pools, such as aboveground biomass, roots, forest litter, soil carbon, and wood products? | The Reference Manual allows for carbon accounting in more carbon pools than the methods in the Workbook. There are no explicit methods for below-ground biomass, deep soil litter, surface soil litter, and wood products. Additional methods, data, and more detailed reporting tables would be required for more complete carbon accounting. |
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| Direct and indirect human activities | Do the Guidelines differentiate clearly between direct and indirect human activities? | Currently not well-defined. The emphasis is on "anthropogenic." There is no method to separate the impacts of direct from indirect effects on observed stocks. |
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