Transparent Monitoring Guidance
The Paris Agreement stresses the importance of the land use sector for climate change mitigation. Parties to the Paris Agreement are required to report on the tracking of progress towards their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as part of their Biennial Transparency Reports (BTR). The first BTRs under the Parsi Agreement must be submitted by all Parties no later than the end of 2024. For complying with these requirements, implementing countries need reliable, authoritative, and unbiased sources of information for Transparent Monitoring (TM) to account for emissions and removals from land use categories and to be able to assess national mitigation actions, including reduction of GHG emissions and enhancement of land carbon sinks.
The project will develop guidance for TM. It aims to facilitate the use of open-source tools and open-access datasets and improve data access. The guidance will be developed building on experience made in four countries. In Côte d’Ivoire, we develop guidance for assessing mitigation along cocoa supply chains to assist an effective and transparent accounting. In Ethiopia, we work towards integration of open-source tools, data and TM principles into the national MRV system to improve the assessment of biomass following land use change and participation of local communities. In Papua New Guinea, we analyse the adoption of open data, of data accessibility policies and the improvement in participation of indigenous peoples and local communities in MRV. In Peru, we develop guidance towards an interactive near-real time forest change monitoring system linked to a national incentive system for forest-related mitigation.