NDC Accounting Rules

The requirement to account for the emissions and removals corresponding to the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) was introduced nearly three years ago by the Parties to the UNFCCC. Since then, there have been further negotiations, discussions, exchange forums and workshops. Yet, NDC accounting has not been fully carved out, thus far, and the demanded recommendations on how to orientate it are still pending, while being scheduled for 2018.

As the result of a four-year long collaborative work of among country representatives from Colombia, Costa Rica and Mexico together with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and the Institute for Applied Ecology (Öko-Institut, Berlin) several guides were edited based on the experiences of this group within an IKI (International Climate Initiative) financed project on NDC Accounting Rules. The guides were drafted after having supported rather country specific activities that focussed on the integration with other climate information systems in construction, especially MRV systems or components (e.g., as part of the SINAMECC in Costa Rica and the SIAC in Colombia) and they draw upon this rich experience.

The first guide, a general NDC accounting guide, is applicable to quantified absolute mitigation targets and mitigation targets relating to an emissions baseline. It includes a proposal on the accounting for several mitigation targets comprised in an NDC, for example conditional and unconditional targets and keeps an eye on other more transparency related questions. The second product is a specific NDC accounting guide for land-use sector. In terms of measuring and also accounting this sector is special in many senses, a circumstance that motivated the extra-effort on the elaboration of a specific guide. The guide starts with a comparison of the different available accounting approaches for the land-use sector, takes into account layers of measuring and tackling climate change in the sector such as national GHG emissions and removals inventories or REDD+, it considers NDC related issues such as baselines and market-mechanisms, it takes a glance on sector specific issues such as harvested wood products and non-permanence before concluding with a summary of recommendations.

The above knowledge products have been achieved in the framework of the project “Accounting Rules for the Achievement of the Mitigation Targets of non-Annex 1 countries” implemented by GIZ. The project is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI) supported by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety of Germany (BMU) based on a decision by the German Bundestag