In-country quality assurance workshops

The GHG Support Unit organizes, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), upon request from developing countries, the in-country QA of their national GHG inventory management systems and latest GHG inventories.

The QA workshops aim to improve the quality and transparency of national GHG inventories reported by developing countries, through in-depth interactions with the national GHG inventory team, and thus facilitate the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement.

The QA workshops take place over five days, with the most urgent resulting recommendations to be addressed before the official submission of a national GHG inventory. The comments and recommendations arising from this capacity-building exercise will also form a sound basis for the development of a national GHG inventory improvement plan (NIIP) targeting the subsequent GHG inventories, and as such be used/referred to in subsequent funding requests in order to have a sound basis for future improvement of national GHG inventories.

Since 2018 the GHG Support Unit has organized the QA of GHG inventory management systems and GHG inventories from 21 countries across all regions (Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean). 

For more information about QA workshops, please contact us at: GHGCapacityBuilding@unfccc.int.

Regional workshops on the building of sustainable national greenhouse gas management systems, and the use of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories

The GHG Support Unit organizes, in collaboration with the Technical Support Unit of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Task Force on National GHG Inventories and FAO, three regional training workshops per year on the building of sustainable national GHG inventory management systems, including on how to establish and/or strengthen national institutional arrangements for the implementation of the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement and how to effectively use and implement the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The regional workshops also provide training on the latest version of the IPCC software.

An interactive training approach is used, including presentations, discussions, exercises using real data sets, hands-on spreadsheets and software use. Presentations by Parties on their experiences and question and answer sessions allow the specifics of all regions to be addressed.

The latest and planned workshops are shown below.

E-courses and certification programme on the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories

The UNFCCC secretariat supports, on an annual basis, the enrolment of national experts to the e-learning and certification courses on 2006 IPCC Guidelines for national GHG inventories from the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute, thereby increasing the pool of experts in each country to prepare and submit transparent national GHG inventories on a regular basis.

The UNFCCC secretariat has, in addition to the French version of those e-courses, recently completed the translation into Spanish of all the GHG MI e-courses on the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The Spanish version will be made available for the third round of enrolment of national experts to be launched in the second half of 2021.

The secretariat received 754 nominations from 97 countries of experts to take part in the first round of online training, which concluded in April 2020, and 311 (41%) experts obtained certification for the sector of their choice.

 For the second round, which ran from September 2020 to April 2021, 314 nominations of experts to take part were received from 102 countries and 122 experts (39%) experts obtained certification for the sector of their choice.

IPCC software

The UNFCCC secretariat supports, and collaborates with, the Technical Support Unit of the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories on the enhancement of the IPCC software to facilitate the development and reporting of national GHG inventories by developing countries, including performing testing of the enhanced versions of the software until its completion.

Self-organized peer-to-peer collaborative learning among developing countries

The UNFCCC secretariat supports on-demand self-organized peer-to-peer collaborative learning among developing countries.

Improving statistics for the energy sector to facilitate the effective implementation of the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement

The GHG Support Unit has launched a new type of in-country capacity-building activities to provide, on request, direct technical support to developing country Parties seeking to improve their national energy statistics and energy balances in order to meet the reporting requirements for GHG inventories, and for mitigation under the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement. Quality energy statistics and energy balances for the energy sector provide a foundation for developing transparent GHG estimates for a sector of the national GHG inventory that is key for all countries.

The capacity-building activities involve all national authorities for energy statistics, including energy and transport ministries, regulators, State-owned energy companies, customs offices and statistical agencies, together with the national entity in charge of compiling the inventory and the national GHG inventory compilation team. The aim is to provide assistance in the development and use of energy statistics and energy balances for the national GHG inventory, including energy indicators and Sankey diagrams, in particular for ensuring time-series consistency and filling data gaps. The assistance will also include training on the use of the GHG inventory in the energy sector by policy planners and decision makers for identifying and meeting a country’s objectives under the Paris Agreement.

For more information about this activity, please contact us at GHGCapacityBuilding@unfccc.int.

Joint global training workshop on energy

The UNFCCC secretariat collaborates with the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the IPCC to build the capacity of developing countries to develop and maintain/improve national energy balances as a means of reinforcing transparency in reporting national GHG inventories on a regular basis.

The joint global training workshop on energy aims at strengthening the technical capacities of developing countries with a view to assisting them to prepare high-quality national GHG inventories for the energy sector, which will be used for multiple purposes, including as the basis for effective national mitigation policy development and for enhanced transparency in reporting, as well as the building of trust among Parties to the Convention and the Paris Agreement.

Global workshop on the uncertainty analysis in national greenhouse gas inventories in developing countries

The UNFCCC secretariat organizes, on an annual basis, in collaboration with the IPCC, one workshop on the management of uncertainties in national GHG inventories in accordance with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines.

The uncertainty analysis has been identified across all QA workshops conducted by the UNFCCC secretariat as a key area for improvement by developing countries. This thematic training is offered by the GHG Support Unit, in collaboration with the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, to train experts from developing countries to assist them to conduct and report uncertainty assessment as required by the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement.

Joint global training workshop on agriculture, forestry and other land use

The UNFCCC secretariat supports a joint global training workshop on the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector for developing countries to prepare for an effective implementation of the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement, organized by FAO with the collaboration of the IPCC.

AFOLU is one of the sectors where many technical issues have been identified during the QA workshops organized by the UNFCCC secretariat, and for which developing countries have requested additional support. In response to that request, the GHG Support Unit organizes jointly with FAO a thematic workshop on AFOLU to address issues related to, among other matters, institutional arrangements, data collection, implementation of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, IPCC software and uncertainty analysis.

IPCC software

The UNFCCC secretariat supports, and collaborates with, the Technical Support Unit of the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, on the enhancement of the IPCC software to facilitate the development and reporting of national GHG inventories by developing countries, including performing testing of the enhanced versions of the software until its completion.

Data collection and management tool

The UNFCCC secretariat is collaborating with the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute to develop a data collection and management tool called Sectoral Activity data for GHG Emissions (SAGE), starting with the energy sector, that will be made freely available in 2021.

The tool will provide a user-friendly interface for gathering input data in conjunction with indispensable documentation to achieve transparent, accurate, consistent, comparable and complete GHG inventories, projections and mitigation impact quantification. It will also function as a reliable repository for documenting, storing, processing, conducting quality control and querying activity and other input data needed to quantify GHG emissions and removals. While this tool will enable processing of data (e.g. converting proxy data into appropriate variables and units, filing completeness gaps and gaps in time series), it is not for the purpose of estimating GHG emissions or removals, but rather is a tool for providing “clean” input data for use in the estimation of emissions by other tools, in particular the IPCC software.

In collaboration with the GHG Management Institute, the GHG Support Unit organized a webinar on 6 September 2021 entitled “Online Demonstration for the Energy Sector of the Sectoral Activity data for GHG Emissions (SAGE), a GHG data collection and management tool to support the implementation of the Enhanced Transparency Framework under the Paris Agreement”. More than 200 national experts attended the webinar, during which numerous questions were asked regarding the features, architecture and main functions of this new tool for GHG data collection and management, which is currently only available for the energy sector. The SAGE tool will continue to be developed to cover the other sectors of a national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory.

The slides of the webinar are available here.
 
The SAGE User Manual for the energy sector is available here.

Quality assurance template

The UNFCCC secretariat develops and disseminates guidance materials for the QA of national GHG inventory management systems and the latest GHG inventory estimates from developing countries.

The QA template is a tool developed to support the voluntary in-country QA of GHG inventory management systems and GHG inventories of developing countries, in line with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement regarding GHG inventories and national GHG inventory reports.

FLINT/moja global

The UNFCCC secretariat supports the refinement and deployment of the open-source Full Lands Integration Tool (FLINT) managed by the international moja global community to support GHG inventories and mitigation actions in the AFOLU sector and assist developing countries to meet their reporting requirements under the Convention and the Paris Agreement.

The UNFCCC secretariat, with the collaboration of moja global and the Government of Canada, organized training sessions from 30 August to 2 September 2021 entitled “Remote Training on the Policy and Technical Aspects of Approach 3, Spatially-Explicit Systems for the Land Sector: System Design, Development and Operation using the FLINT Platform”. The recordings and training material of the training sessions are accessible in the section Webinars and online trainings – training materials and recordings.

Digital Earth Africa

Digital Earth Africa (DE Africa) Map is a website that aims to provide easy map-based access to spatial data on the African continent. It was developed by Data61 CSIRO in collaboration with Geoscience Australia to help improve understanding of how to use satellite data for better decision-making, including for setting up and maintaining measurement, reporting and verification systems under the Convention and implementing the enhanced transparency framework under the Paris Agreement for the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector.
By providing users with access to data and analysis tools, the website democratizes access to remote sensing data to enable ad hoc report generation and the rapid development of new algorithms to process remote-sensing data.

The Digital Earth Africa Learning Platform is accessible through the following link https://learn.digitalearthafrica.org/

United States Environmental Protection Agency National greenhouse gas inventory system templates

The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s national GHG inventory system templates facilitate the efforts of developing countries to improve their institutional capacity to manage the GHG inventory compilation process and to establish a sustainable system for producing regular national GHG inventories:

Introduction Toolkit for Building National GHG Inventory Systems

Template 1. How to Use the Templates

Template 2. Institutional Arrangements

Template 3. Methods and Data Documentation

Template 4. Quality Assurance Quality Control

Template 5. Key Category Analysis

Template 6. Archiving System

Template 7. National Inventory Improvement Plan

Agriculture and Land Use Greenhouse Gas Inventory Software

The Agriculture and Land Use Greenhouse Gas Inventory (ALU) Software guides an inventory compiler through the process of estimating GHG emissions and removals related to agricultural and forestry activities. This software is based on the methods in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The software simplifies the process of conducting the inventory by dividing the inventory analysis into steps to facilitate the compilation of activity data, assignment of emission factors and completion of the calculations. The software also has internal checks to ensure data integrity.

The ALU software programme is designed to support the evaluation of mitigation potential using the inventory data as a baseline for projecting emission trends associated with management alternatives.

Collect Earth

Collect Earth is a tool that enables data collection through Google Earth. Used in conjunction with Google Earth, Bing Maps and Google Earth Engine, high and very high resolution satellite imagery can be analysed for a wide variety of purposes.

It is highly customizable for specific data collection needs and methodologies.

HoliSoils – Natural Resources Institute Finland

The UNFCCC secretariat and the Natural Resources Institute Finland (a Government-owned research institute known as Luke) are collaborating to  respond to mandates given to the secretariat to support the development of transparent and high-quality national GHG inventories by developing countries through a range of activities, including developing and disseminating methods, tools and data – particularly in relation to the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector – and providing relevant training for those countries.

The first collaborative project to be implemented will be HoliSoils, on which more information can be found via the following links:

www.holisoils.eu

https://holisoils.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HoliSolis-Brochure_web.pdf

https://holisoils.eu/new-project-focuses-on-management-modelling-and-monitoring-for-european-forest-soils

https://twitter.com/holisoils

The products of the project (such as a measurement protocol, and guidance for soil sampling and analysis) will be published and disseminated as they become available, and relevant training sessions for developing countries will be jointly delivered by the secretariat and Luke.