Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry

Introduction | Background | What’s happening now?
Associated activities | How GPG fits with IPCC Operations | Links for More Information

Introduction

The way in which humans use and manage vegetation (eg. through forestry and agriculture) has a major impact on the amount of greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. The importance of land based sources and sinks of greenhouse gasses has been recognised through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed in 1992 and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Inventories prepared for both UNFCCC reporting and for assessing compliance with quantified targets for greenhouse emissions under the Kyoto Protocol require Parties to account for the greenhouse gasses they emit (or store) through land use practices. Emissions from land use practices may contribute a significant proportion of national emissions profiles, so it is vital that the fluxes of greenhouse gasses between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere can be accurately estimated and accounted for by individual nations.

Using standard guidelines to account for the amount of carbon stored in and emitted from terrestrial ecosystems has a number of advantages, including:

• Consistency: It is important that all nations comply with consistent rules and principles for carbon accounting, so that estimates of emissions and removals of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere are comparable between countries;
• Accuracy: It is desirable that all nations use carbon accounting practices that comply with the good practices for accounting developed by experts from around the world and which will give estimates of emissions from terrestrial ecosystems that are accurate and in which the uncertainty is minimised; and
• Transparency: If all nations develop inventories based on the same accounting guidelines and good practice guidance, then the emission inventories of any country will be transparent and verifiable.

Background

International guidelines were adopted 7 years ago to aid with accounting for the storage and emission of greenhouse gasses from various sources: the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (IPCC Guidelines). These guidelines were developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), through an international process involving consultation and input from a wide range of experts from many nations. The IPCC Guidelines deal with emissions from all sources of greenhouse gasses, with terrestrial ecosystems being dealt with in Chapter 5 under the title - “Land Use Change and Forestry”. Non-CO2 greenhouse emissions associated with land management practices are dealt with in Chapter 4.

Although the IPCC Guidelines are currently used by all nations for greenhouse gas accounting and emissions reporting, they were developed before the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol (1997). Hence, the methods in the IPCC Guidelines do not fully embody the principles of the Kyoto Protocol, which introduced a range of new requirements for accounting for carbon fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. Indeed, for all sectors there was a need for additional guidance to produce inventories that were accurate and in which uncertainties were minimised and defined.

To address the limitations of the IPCC Guidelines, the Parties to the UNFCCC asked the IPCC in 1998 to produce Good Practice Guidance to the IPCC Guidelines. Since the Parties had already agreed to use the IPCC Guidelines for estimating greenhouse gas inventories, the role of Good Practice Guidance was not to replace the IPCC Guidelines, but rather to elaborate their use and provide advice consistent with them. The first volume of the Good Practice Guidance (GPG2000) was completed in 2000 and adopted by the sixth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP6) held in Montreal (May 2000).

The first volume of GPG2000 did not cover the land use change and forestry activities for several reasons:

• At the time that the GPG2000 was being developed, the IPCC was also preparing a Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (2000) (Special Report) to provide information on how the new requirements for accounting for the land based sources and sinks outlined in the Kyoto Protocol should be operationalised. Parallel work on the two would have carried a risk of inconsistencies, and
• Significant negotiations on Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) were underway in the UNFCCC process, and the IPCC recognised that it would be better to develop Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF in the light of the outcome of these negotiations

Agreement on the treatment of LULUCF was reached at COP7, which took place in Marrakesh (November 2001). The IPCC was then requested to develop Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF under decision 11/CP.7 agreed to at COP7. The COP invited the IPCC to provide guidance on:

• choice of estimation method, consistent with the IPCC Guidelines
• quality assurance and quality control procedures to provide internal as well as independent cross-checks on inventory estimates
• data and information to be documented, archived and reported to facilitate review and assessment of inventory estimates
• identification of key (i.e. most significant) source and sink categories and quantification of uncertainties so that the resources available can be directed toward reducing uncertainties over time, and the improvement can be tracked.

The IPCC is responding to the invitation of the COP7 (in paragraphs 3(a) and 3(b) of 11/CP.7 (p54)) by producing a single report on Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management for LULUCF.

What’s happening now?

To date, a wide range of countries have nominated expert authors to be involved in the development of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF. Three meetings of expert authors were held during 2002 in order to prepare a first-order draft of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF, which was released in December 2002 for review by experts and national governments from around the world. The submission of comments on this draft document was completed at the end of January, 2003. More than 6,000 comments in total were received from governments and experts on the first-order draft of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF, and the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting submitted more than 400 comments. These comments were considered by the expert author teams during meetings held in early April 2003, and consequently a second-order draft document was assembled.

The second-order draft of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF was released in May 2003 for review by experts and governments. The submission of comments on this draft document was completed at the end of June 2003, and the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting submitted approximately 500 comments. The IPCC author teams will now revise the second-order draft of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF in the light of comments received by the second government/expert review. A final draft of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF will be provided to governments in October for final comment, before their expected acceptance/adoption at the COP 9 meeting in December 2003.

Several members of the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting are directly involved in contributing to the development of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF as expert authors. The CRC participated in the expert review of both the first and second-order drafts of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF.

The structure of the Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF document currently being developed is as follows:

• Chapter 1 –Presents an overview of the document, including the context in which it has been/is being developed
• Chapter 2 – Provides advice on different approaches for classifying land area depending on the data available. It identifies 6 broad categories of land-use.
• Chapter 3 – Gives advice on implementing the methodologies in the IPCC Guidelines to LULUCF. It updates default parameters in the IPCC Guidelines, extends methodological options, and elaborates methodologies that were addressed cursorily or not at all in the IPCC Guidelines.
• Chapter 4 – Describes the supplementary methods and good practice guidance specifically linked to the Kyoto Protocol. This chapter also provides advice on identification of project boundaries and sampling strategies for project activities under Articles 6 and 12 of the Kyoto Protocol.
• Chapter 5 – Provides good practice guidance for LULUCF on six cross-cutting issues identified in GPG2000. These six issues are: uncertainty assessment, sampling, key category analysis, quality assurance and quality control, time series consistency, and verification.

Associated activities

At COP7, the IPCC was also invited to address other issues relating to LULUCF. The Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF covered in paragraphs 3(a) and 3(b) of decision 11/CP.7 in the Marrakesh Accords is called Task 1. The other tasks are:

• Paragraph 3(C) of decision 11/CP.7 invites the IPCC to “develop definitions for direct human-induced ‘degradation’ of forests and ‘devegetation’ of other vegetation types, and methodological options to inventory and report on emissions resulting from these activities” (this has been called Task 2).
• Paragraph 3(d) of decision 11/CP.7 invites the IPCC to “develop practicable methodologies to factor out direct human-induced changes in carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks from changes in carbon stocks and greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks due to indirect human-induced and natural effects (such as those from carbon dioxide fertilisation and nitrogen deposition), and effects due to past practices in forests (pre-reference year)” (this has been called Task 3)

The final result of Task 2 will be a methodological report, the purpose of which is to respond to concerns that the selection of eligible activities under article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol could give rise to unbalanced accounting if certain types of degradation or devegetation activities are not included. The development of definitions and methodologies under Task 2 is being done in close co-operation with the preparation of the report for Task 1 (good practice guidance for LULUCF) to ensure consistency with the methodologies developed by these two reports. Hence the development of the Task 2 report has mirrored that of the Task 1 report, with the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting contributing expert comments on a first-order draft of Task 2 in conjunction with the comments provided on the first-order draft of Task 1 in January 2003.

Task 3 is very complex and is not as advanced as Tasks 1 & 2. In September 2002, an IPCC Expert Group Planning Meeting was held, during which one of the main objectives was to recommend the type of report that should be developed. Governments are expected to nominate expert authors to contribute to the Task 3 report in early 2003, following which a meeting of the nominated authors will be held to coordinate the development of an initial draft report for Task 3. A member of the CRC for Greenhouse Accounting was nominated to attend the IPCC Expert Group Planning Meeting in 2002. The nominated expert(s) to represent Australia on the author team for Task 3 has not yet been advised.

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