The Kyoto Protocol reporting and review process

1. The Kyoto commitment period emissions reporting Annex I Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recently submitted their 2012 annual emission inventories covering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the time period 1990–2010 (see UNFCCC, 2012). These submissions were due by 15 April 2012, by which time the opportunities to reduce real-world emissions before the end of the Kyoto commitment period (2008–2012) were almost over. Parties negotiated a 15-month period between the end of a year and the submission of their inventories (UNFCCC, 1999). This time lag is needed, as the collection of a large body of mainly statistical data to estimate emissions needs time. EU Member States must report their GHG inventories under the EU Monitoring Mechanism Decision (European Union, 2004) 3 months prior to the UNFCCC deadline, to enable the European Union to ensure availability of these data to compile the EU wide inventory in line with its own reporting obligations as one of the Parties to UNFCCC. As a result, the time series included in these most recent emission inventory submissions covers only three of the 5 years of the Kyoto commitment period. So Parties have reported emissions data for a bit over half of the commitment period while this commitment period has almost fully passed. Annual submissions are prepared by Parties in a welldefined format: a set of about 60 linked tables, known as the Common Reporting Format (CRF) and a companion National Inventory Report that follows a prescribed outline and details the methods, data and results of the inventory compilation process (UNFCCC, 2003). The latest submissions from Parties, past submissions and a database of national GHG data are available from UNFCCC (2011).