Introduction

National Communications of Annex I Parties can be accessed from this page, and the Non-Annex I initial national communications will also be posted here as they are submitted. These important documents have been placed on the UNFCCC Web Site where they constitute a concrete, readily accessible source of information, in particular one that provides useful functionalities not available with the printed versions. The documents are all in Acrobat PDF format which can be easily viewed using the free Acrobat Reader software. We hope this resource will achieve its goal, to inform users of this Web site of the national climate change programs of a wide variety of countries.

Impetus behind the Project

Many Non-Annex I Parties are currently in the process of compiling their first National Communications. Indeed, several Non-Annex I initial national communications were submitted at the time of writing at COP-3. This is a significant task for any country, and we felt it would be useful for Non-Annex I Parties to be able to draw from the experiences of others in preparing their communications. However, the Annex I first National Communications amount to thousands of pages of text, figures and tables in several different languages. Collectively, in hard copy, they are impractical to transport, to access, and to compare. These problems are easily solved by publishing the National Communications on the Internet where they can be accessed efficiently, providing the user has a connection to the World Wide Web. For those without this service, the Secretariat will be publishing the latest version of its Web Site on a CD-ROM shortly after COP-3. This CD-ROM will be mailed to all participants at the Conference and can also be ordered by members of the public.

Although at present the national communications of mostly Annex I Parties are available here, these countries have differing national circumstances, economies and interests. The first National Communications of other Non-Annex I Parties will also be added when they come available. All Parties are invited to submit electronic versions of their National Communications to the secretariat - in any format - where we will publish them on-line.

We have maintained the original layout of the National Communications by publishing them in Acrobat pdf format. This interface allows users to view all the documents in a similar form to the printed versions although there may be some small differences. In addition, the Acrobat format incorporates an extensive search facility, built-in bookmarks to aid navigation, and capacities such as zoom to view small details. Notes on its use are provided below.