This document discusses issues and options for reporting greenhouse gas inventories and tracking progress towards nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. It notes that the recently adopted modalities, procedures and guidelines represent a significant step towards transparency but that further work is needed to develop common reporting tables. Key issues addressed include how countries can report on flexibility used in inventories, avoiding "false zeros," improving the match to guidelines categories, and the machine-readable format. For tracking progress, it notes the diversity of NDCs poses challenges and discusses how to address different target types and timeframes in a consistent yet country-specific manner. The document concludes the new guidelines are an opportunity for parties to better understand reporting requirements and ensure improvement over time.

1. Climate Change Expert Group www.oecd.org/env/cc/ccxg.htm
Reporting Tables – issues and options
GHG inventories and tracking progress
towards NDCs
CCXG Global Forum on the Environment and Climate Change
March 2019
Based on: Rocha, M (2019) Reporting Tables – potential areas of work
under SBSTA and options , Part I - GHG inventories and Tracking
Progress towards NDCs

2. 2 Climate Change Expert Group
Presentation outline
 Issues and potential areas of work:
o Reporting of GHG inventories
o Information on tracking progress towards NDCs
 Conclusions

3. 3 Climate Change Expert Group
Introduction
 MPGs adopted at COP24 represent a significant step towards
enhancing transparency of information reported by Parties.
 The MPGs request SBSTA to develop in 2019/20:
o Common Reporting Tables (CRTs) for the reporting of
national GHG inventories
o Common Tabular format (CTFs) for the reporting of
information necessary to track progress towards NDCs
What could be areas of work under SBSTA?
Parties’
experience • Environmental integrity
• TACCC
• No backsliding
• Flexibility
• Improvement over time

4. 4 Climate Change Expert Group
National GHG inventories
 The MPGs represent a strengthening of current reporting
requirements of GHG inventories, particularly for developing
countries.
 Flexibility is available to developing countries that need it in the
light of the capacities on a number of provisions of the inventories
guidelines, including on:
o Key category analysis
o Uncertainty assessment
o Quality assurance/quality control
o GHG and years countries report on.

5. 5 Climate Change Expert Group
 Countries using flexibility shall:
o clearly indicate the provision to which flexibility is applied;
o concisely clarify capacity constraints;
o provide self-determined estimated time frames for
improvements in relation to those capacity constraints.
 How can Parties report on the flexibility used? Narrative?
Mix of tabular and narrative?
National GHG inventories –
issues and options for operationalising flexibility

6. 6 Climate Change Expert Group
 Use of flexibility and data completeness:
o Flexibility available for reporting on gases or time
series
o Not reporting on emissions from certain gases or in
certain years does not mean that those emissions
are either not occurring or insignificant
How to avoid “false zeros” in CRTs?
National GHG inventories –
issues and options for operationalising flexibility

7. 7 Climate Change Expert Group
 Based on developed countries’ experience
reporting using CRF tables:
o Better match to IPCC 2006 guidelines
categories: SBSTA clear guidance on how to map
CRT tables/rows/columns to IPCC 2006 categories
o CRTs and reporting of land-use emissions: continue to
report on LULUCF and Agriculture sectors
separately?
o Machine-readable CRT format: developing
countries report in pdf format, which makes is hard to
read in.
National GHG inventories –
other potential issues

8. 8 Climate Change Expert Group
Tracking progress made in
implementing and achieving NDCs
 MPGs represent a significant step forward for
enhancing transparency in the area of tracking
progress towards Parties’ mitigation commitments under
the Paris Agreement.
 Information to be provided in a “structured summary”
in CTFs, including:
o Information on self-selected indicators
o Information on GHG emissions, where applicable
o Contribution of the LULUCF sector, where applicable
o Information on Article 6

9. 9 Climate Change Expert Group
Tracking progress –
potential issues
 Key challenge: large diversity of NDCs
o How to address the diversity in NDC typology:
important to strike a balance between having
consistent information and the required in-depth,
detailed/country-specific information necessary to the
understanding of progress;

10. 10 Climate Change Expert Group
o Quantitative vs qualitative targets: “Structured
summary” essentially quantitative information – how
about qualitative/non-quantifiable targets?
o Single vs multi-year NDCs: implications for tracking
progress towards implementing and achieving NDCs
o How to treat NDCs containing multiple targets:
track towards one main target or all targets?
o Implications of NDC conditionality: implications for
tracking progress towards achieving their NDCs?
Tracking progress –
potential issues
vs
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11. 11 Climate Change Expert Group
To sum up
 The MPGs represent a great step forward to enhance
transparency of information reported by Parties and on
tracking progress.
 The development of new CRTs (inventories) and CTFs
(tracking progress) represent an opportunity for Parties
to:
o Better understand the information they can report on
o Better understand how and under which format
information can be best reported
o How to ensure improvement over time

12. 12 Climate Change Expert Group
Thank you!