The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will on Monday 2 September 2013 commence the final round of written comments by governments on the final draft of the 2013 Revised Supplementary Methods and Good Practice Guidance Arising from the Kyoto Protocol (KP Supplement). The exercise will end on 29 September 2013.
This is the third stage of IPCC mandated reviews before formal adoption and acceptance of the KP Supplement at the 37th Session of the IPCC to be held in Batumi, Georgia, from 14 to 18 October 2013.
Review is a vital part of producing methodology reports such as this one. Draft reports are subjected to a multi-stage review beginning with the review of a first order draft by scientific experts, followed by the review of a second order draft by governments and experts and a final round of government comments before adoption and acceptance at a Session of the Panel.
Two previous drafts of the KP Supplement were subject to scientific and technical review by experts (Expert Review) from 7 January 2012 to 3 February 2012 and by governments and experts (Government and Expert Review) from 22 April 2013 to 2 June 2013. The draft was revised by the authors after both of these reviews in response to comments received, and this process has produced the Final Draft of the KP Supplement. The first review of the Overview Chapter took place at the time of the Government and Expert Review.
Climate policy and global climate negotiations rely on a robust scientific foundation to produce sound results. The IPCC provides policymakers with regular assessments of climate science and its potential impacts, as well as assessments of the possibilities for mitigating climate change. The estimation of emissions and removals of greenhouse gases (GHG) is one important basis for climate mitigation and the IPCC provides de facto international standards for such estimation, through highly technical work, while offering flexibility to take different national circumstances and capacities into account.
In December 2011, the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the IPCC to review and, if necessary, update supplementary methodologies for estimating anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks resulting from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities [under Article 3, paragraphs 3 and 4, of the Kyoto Protocol (KP)], on the basis of, inter alia, Chapter 4 of IPCC’s 2003 Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (GPG-LULUCF)
In response, in June the following year, at its 35th Session in Geneva, Switzerland, the IPCC asked its Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (TFI) to produce the KP Supplement. Also at the request of the UNFCCC, the TFI is working on the 2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands, whose final draft was circulated for government comments on 12 August 2013 for four weeks until 8 September 2013. It will also be considered for formal adoption and acceptance at the 37th Session of the IPCC in October.
