Nigeria, 10 others submit greenhouse gas emission status

Eleven developing countries, including Nigeria, have submitted detailed information on their greenhouse gas emissions trends and status to the UN Climate Change Secretariat, partly reporting significant progress in reducing emissions and providing a high level of detail in their reporting.

Greenhouse gas emission reductions are crucial to meet the key temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to hold the global average temperature to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And transparency and reporting are important for countries to take effective action and receive the necessary support.

The Biennial Update Reports (BURs) submitted by countries were examined during a remote technical analysis conducted earlier this month.

The participating countries report actions taken in various different sectors such as energy; Agriculture, Forestry and Land-Use (AFOLU); and industrial process and waste.

Six of these countries – Albania, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Lesotho, Saint Lucia, and Zimbabwe – made their first submission, while five others – Nigeria, Togo, Indonesia, Argentina and South Africa – increased their reporting under the UNFCCC by submitting their second, third and fourth BURs.

BUR submissions are part of the International Consultation and Analysis (ICA) process, which aims to increase the transparency of emission reduction actions and their effects.

Four teams comprising 55 technical experts from various developed and developing countries engaged in the review of the BURs, followed by interactive consultations with the countries to identify their capacity building needs to strengthen their technical and institutional capacities and to enhance the transparency of their climate actions.

Considerable emission reduction actions have been reported in the AFOLU sector in all the participating countries.

In the energy sector, the participating countries also reported ambitious targets in terms of considerably increasing the share of renewables in their energy mix as well as promoting energy efficiency measures.

Most of the countries also reported mitigation actions in the industrial process and waste sectors. For example, Indonesia targets an emission reduction of 11,348 Gg CO2 eq from the waste sector in 2030 by improving the treatment of municipal solid waste and the treatment of domestic liquid waste recovery in landfills, including waste to power and heat projects.

All 11 participating countries have made progress by using the 2006 IPCC guidelines for developing their GHG inventory and have made efforts to enhance their transparency. Efforts are also being made to strengthen national capacities to transition towards the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) under the Paris Agreement. Some countries are already preparing for this transition by implementing some specific actions such as Nigeria which intends to develop its measurement, reporting and verification system to suit the reporting standards under the ETF.

Following the week of technical analysis, the team of technical experts is elaborating a summary report for each participating country. The Parties will then participate in the Facilitative Sharing of Views (FSV) workshop, which is the final step in the ICA process.