Sustainable National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Management Systems

This workshop was organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in collaboration with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Global Research Alliance on Agriculture Greenhouse Gases (GRA) and the Consultative Group of Experts (CGE). The workshop was a response to requests from non-Annex I Parties to the Convention at the forty second session of the ‘Subsidiary Body for Implementation’ (SBI), to provide further technical support in order to improve their domestic capacity so these individual countries can facilitate the continuity in meeting reporting requirements.
The workshop targeted the capacity enhancement of the national experts from non-Annex I countries within the Asia-Pacific and the Eastern Europe regions who are involved in conducting and/or coordinating national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories, through hands-on training on the use of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National GHG Inventories, as well as building of sustainable national GHG inventory management systems including the IPCC inventory software. Additionally, being addressed at the workshop was the institutional arrangements required to support the regular development and submission of national GHG inventories.
The participants, including Vanda Faasoa-Chan Ting from MNRE-Renewable Energy Division (RED) who represented Samoa, were given the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National GHG Inventories, and to practise using the IPCC inventory software system. The workshop covered a variety of issues on developing a national GHG inventory system, such as methods and data documentation, data archiving, uncertainty analysis, emission factor database, identifying key categories and national inventory improvement plans. The data provided for the hands-on exercises was sectorally arranged into the four main sectors of (i) Energy, (ii) Industrial Processes and Product Use [IPPU], (iii) Waste and (iv) Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses [AFOLU]. These sectoral group sessions however were done simultaneously, so not all the participants could attend all the sessions. Fortunately, the practical exercises ensured that the participants were given a fair idea of the type of data to be collected and how it is to be entered correctly into the IPCC inventory software system to accurately produce the GHG emission values.
MNRE will form and lead a National GHG Inventory Taskforce which will include stakeholders from other government ministries and agencies, to ensure the institutional arrangements facilitating the National GHG Inventory is in place for ease of information-sharing and data-updating. These stakeholders will be responsible for providing their respective sectoral data to the GHG Inventory Taskforce so the National GHG Inventory staff members (MNRE-RED) can update the data on the GHG inventory software system. There shall be training for MNRE-RED staff who will be responsible for data-entry and data-updating of the IPCC inventory software system.
Samoa needs a new GHG inventory before it can commence actions on compiling the necessary information required for its Third National Communications submission to the UNFCCC. Given the amount of developments in recent years within the Electricity, Transport and Agricultural sectors, it is timely that a new GHG Inventory be initiated and implemented because the data from the last GHG inventory in 2004 is outdated.