COP 9 (Milan, December 2003) adopted two important decisions on LULUCF. The first one, decision 13/CP.9, welcomed the report of the IPCC entitled Good Practice Guidance for LULUCF (GPG LULUCF) and decided that Parties should use this report for preparing and reporting annual greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories for the LULUCF sector under the Convention due in 2005 and beyond. At the time, this decision excluded guidance relating to the preparation and reporting of GHG inventories for the LULUCF sector under the context of the Kyoto Protocol, a matter subsequently taken up at a later session (see below). The GPG LULUCF divided the reporting of LULUCF under the Convention into six land categories, including:

• Forest land
• Cropland
• Grassland
• Wetlands
• Settlements
• Other land

A new common reporting format was also adopted with this decision. Reporting categories are divided into greenhouse gases and land uses. The land categories are divided into lands remaining in the same land use category (for example, forest lands that remain as such) and lands converted into another land use category (for example, forest lands converted into croplands) during the inventory period.

The secretariat incorporated these tables of the common reporting format for LULUCF and relevant technical modifications in the UNFCCC guidelines on annual inventories (FCCC/SBSTA/2004/8). A new version of the CRF Reporter which includes the LULUCF tables based on the guidelines adopted in decision 13/CP.9 has been made available to Annex I Parties to facilitate inventory submissions in 2006.