Some 72 participants from developing countries gathered at FAO headquarters in Rome from 25 to 28 January, 2011 to attend a training workshop on national systems for GHG inventories, aimed at exchanging views and recommendations on how to improve the legal, procedural and institutional arrangements to report GHG inventories to the UNFCCC in general and in the context of Land Use and Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and REDD+ sectors.

The training workshop gave countries the opportunity to increase their knowledge on GHG inventories and the various steps to implement a national system. They also received information on the specific national context to report GHG inventories for the LULUCF sector and provide recommendations to improve the reporting for REDD+ activities under the UNFCCC. The UN-REDD Programme jointly organized the event with the Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the German Technical Cooperation (GIZ), and the Johann Heinrich von Thünen Institute (vTI).

The workshop was also able to look at some of the implications of the December 2010 Cancun Accord, which included important decisions regarding mitigation actions that will be implemented by non-Annex I countries and significantly changes the legal requirements of non-Annex I Parties reporting to the Convention.

National GHG inventories are the instrument identified by the Convention for gathering and sharing information on GHG changes (emissions added and removed from the atmosphere) to understand national trends in emissions generated by human activity and estimate the global GHG balance. To produce a periodic national GHG inventory a set of functions for planning, preparation and management are established and maintained over time by countries. Under the Kyoto Protocol of the UNFCCC these functions have been formalized in a decision text and constitute the national system for a GHG inventory. For non-Annex I Parties the national GHG inventory is a portion of the National Communication.

Non-Annex I Parties will now be required to move from a system based on temporary arrangements, which delivers the national GHG inventory together with the National Communication without any time constraint, to a permanent system which should deliver every two years and the supplementary information related to Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and likely REDD+.

Keeping this in mind, the workshop was organized in four clusters of lessons and presentations: 1. Capacity building programs, 2. National systems for GHG inventories, 3. Elements of the national systems, and 4. Needs assessment and planning actions.

This workshop is also part of FAO’s efforts to provide non-Annex 1 countries with assistance and technical support on national systems for GHG inventories for further dissemination as part of the UN-REDD Global Programme. All workshop information and presentations can be downloaded here and the full report will be available on the UN-REDD Programme website in April 2011.