Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry

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Projects

The Guidelines do not address projects, although many of the accounting methods can be applied to estimate emissions and removals of GHGs, changes in carbon stock, and associated activities. Development of guidelines for project activities will depend greatly on the level of detail required and future decisions by the Conference of Parties (COP). The degree of improvements to the Guidelines depends on their intended use. Within each of the options below, Parties could choose their own methods, or internationally agreed methods could be stipulated. There are three main options, of increasing complexity:

Option 1. If the Guidelines are intended to show impacts to a Party's assigned amount, a summary of changes in net GHG emissions and removals from all projects may be all that is required. The first step would involve the transfer of GHG emissions and removals from the project to the national inventory; in the second step, the GHGs from projects would be subtracted from the national inventory.

• Option 1a-This option would allow Parties to choose a different reporting format for projects approved by the Parties. An example would be a modification of the Uniform Reporting Format (URF) used in the Activities Implemented Jointly Pilot Project. This option is the simplest to operationalize, but it lacks transparency in methods and data.
• Option 1b-This option could stipulate the use of internationally agreed methods and perhaps involve the use of guidance for the URF.

Option 2. If the Guidelines are intended to enable Parties to generate a complete and transparent record of GHG emissions and removals of each project, including a breakdown of all activities, baselines, leakage, risks, and so forth (see methods in Chapter 5), considerable changes will be required.

Option 3. Finally, there may be a need to report all changes in net GHG emissions and removals and environmental and socioeconomic impacts, especially for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects (Article 12).

For option 1, a reporting format in the Guidelines could be developed with minimal effort. For options 2 and 3, considerable effort may be required. The period involved in developing these options would depend on the decisions of the Parties.

For projects, many of the data and reporting needs are similar to those of Articles 3.3 and 3.4. There is a range of additional features to consider, however, including project locations and boundaries, additionality, leakage, permanence, biodiversity, and impacts on sustainable development and the environment. The Guidelines were not designed for reporting of these features. They do provide a basis, however, for reporting changes in emissions and removals of GHGs for projects in a single year. To avoid double-counting, projects and national inventories should be reported in a consistent way in space and time.

Next Steps

Article 5.2 of the Protocol provides a mechanism for Parties to initiate a process to improve the accounting methods and default data in the Guidelines. The time required to make such improvements depends on the decisions of the Parties-including decisions on methods for reporting on projects, which are not currently covered by the Guidelines.

Of importance in this context is a decision by the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) at its eighth session to encourage the IPCC Inventories Program to "give high priority to completing its work on uncertainty, as well as to prepare a report on good practice in inventory management." In addition, the "SBSTA invited the IPCC to develop a work plan addressing methodological issues raised in the IPCC special report in the context of the IPCC 1996 Revised Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories in the areas of agriculture and land-use change and forestry, to commence as soon as practicable following completion of the special report." This work plan may include good practice guidance in LUCF to be initiated in 2000.

Following decisions by the Parties, possible improvements to the Guidelines include the following:

• Reporting of defined activities and changes in carbon stocks associated with them
• Methods for accounting for carbon stocks not currently provided in the Guidelines
• Methods for data collection and evaluation of data quality (uncertainties)
• Methods to integrate changes in aboveground biomass, soil carbon, and other pools, as well as reporting of these changes spatially and by activity (geo-referencing)
• Reporting for projects that takes into account baselines, system boundaries, leakage, and additionality, as well as socioeconomic and non-GHG environmental impacts
• Reporting tables for inventories and projects that differentiate between the base year, 1990, and the commitment period. Projects that qualify under Article 6-and potentially under Article 12-would have to be distinguished, reported, and treated differently in the national GHG inventories of Annex I and non-Annex I Parties.