World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have partnered to publish supplemental guidance to the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPC) that explains how cities, towns, counties, or other subnational jurisdictions (collectively called communities) can include GHG emissions and removals from forests and trees in their GHG inventories.

The Supplemental Guidance for Forests and Trees offers communities a robust, transparent, and globally applicable method to consistently identify, calculate, and report on GHG emissions and removals by forests and trees within communities’ boundaries. It provides GHG inventory compilers with standardized, yet flexible, directions for estimating GHG emissions and removals associated specifically with forests and trees within the boundaries of communities. This supplement is designed to be used in conjunction with the GPC, and it expands upon the GPC’s guidance for the “Land” sub-sector of the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Uses (AFOLU) sector by providing detailed methods for estimating emissions from and removals by forests and trees within a community’s GHG accounting boundary (Scope 1).

The objectives of this supplemental guidance are to:

  • Provide methods that enable communities to cost-effectively include forests and trees in their local GHG inventories in a way that helps community leaders and their constituents plan their climate change mitigation actions.
  • Create international consistency and transparency in the way communities develop GHG inventories for forests and trees, while recognizing each community’s unique circumstances and needs.
  • Support the reconciliation of national GHG inventories and subnational monitoring to inform mitigation targets (for example, nationally determined contributions) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
  • Help cities and other subnational actors understand how forests and trees can contribute to ambitious and transparent climate change mitigation goals.

Once communities have completed the GHG inventory for forests and trees, they can use that information for tracking progress in reducing emissions and/or increasing removals over time or as input for climate action plans. An example worked inventory illustrating this supplemental guidance is also available for download.

For more details, watch the Guidebook launch event recording, available in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

 

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