The Conference of the Parties (COP), by its decision 19/CP.8, adopted the revised guidelines for the technical review of greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories from Parties included in Annex I to the Convention1 (Annex I Parties) to be applied from the year 2003. The COP, by its decision 14/CP.11, updated the UNFCCC reporting guidelines on annual inventories2, including the revisions to the tables of the common reporting format (CRF) for reporting on the LULUCF sector and decided that Annex I Parties shall use these tables for the purpose of submission of the annual inventory due in and after 2007. For the inventory submissions due in 2008, Parties used the updated UNFCCC reporting guidelines adopted by decision 14/CP.11. As part of the inventory review process, the COP, by its decision 19/CP.8, requested the secretariat to conduct an annual synthesis and assessment of GHG inventories for all Annex I Parties. The purposes of the synthesis and assessment are to facilitate the consideration of inventory data and other information across Parties, and to identify issues for further consideration during the reviews of individual inventories. The synthesis and assessment is to be prepared in two parts. Part I is to provide information to allow comparisons across Annex I Parties, as well as descriptions of common
methodological issues. Part II is to provide a preliminary analysis of individual Annex I Party inventories, in particular to identify outstanding issues requiring clarification during the individual review stage of the process. As part of the annual inventory review process under the guidelines for review under Article 8 of the Kyoto Protocol3, the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), by its decision 22/CMP.1, requested the secretariat to conduct a standardized set of data comparisons to be performed on the CRF submissions to be used in the review process. Part I of this synthesis and assessment report provides information of such data comparisons across Annex I Parties. In accordance with decision 19/CP.8, Part I of this synthesis and assessment report has been sent to Parties for comment prior to publication on the UNFCCC web site. Part II will be sent to the respective Party for comments and, together with the comments from the respective Party, will be provided to the corresponding expert review team as input for the individual review; Part II will not be published on the UNFCCC web site