INDC Agriculture Compilers Meeting, January 2022

On 17 January 2022, the Inventories and Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) Network hosted a virtual meeting of National Agriculture Sector Inventory Compilers. Thirty-five countries were represented by their national agriculture inventory compiler, spanning Africa, Europe, LAC and Asia, North America and Oceania.

The objectives of the meeting were to facilitate networking and information exchange, to discuss common issues faced in agriculture inventory compilation and to determine how the Network may best assist participants with these and inventory improvements.

To prepare for the meeting, the INDC Network collected survey responses from the agriculture inventory country representatives with questions on national agriculture sector GHG accounting, issues being faced, incorporation of the IPCC 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and capacity.

Agriculture Compilers Meeting

• Pre-survey data: the Network received 45 responses from national agriculture inventory compilers prior to the meeting. In general agriculture inventory compilers globally struggle with i) data, ii) financial constraints, iii) emission factors, iv) expertise and v) inventory relationships.
• Discussion: Three topics were discussed; i) livestock emission calculation, ii) agricultural soils emission calculation and iii) an open forum including rice emission calculation where participants also discussed IPCC guidance and the political dimension of inventories.

INDC Direction + Activities
Two focus areas emerged from the discussion and pre-survey data as useful for the INDC Network and the wider GRA and research community:

1. A resource summarizing ag. sector methods of emission calculation (NIR is too lengthy and cannot keyword search across multiple countries’ methods for one area of development); and
2. A resource / set of guidelines on capturing mitigations in national level inventories, for proper validation of emission reductions and potential for Governments to formally issue carbon credits.

If you are interested in either of these resources or have any other questions regarding the meeting, please get in touch with the INDC Network Co-Leads at [email protected].