Recent developments
COP 19 (Nov. 2013, Warsaw, Poland) adopted the work programme 23/CP.19 on the revision of the guidelines for the review of biennial reports and national
communications, including national inventory reviews, for developed country Parties.
Reporting of first biennial report
Following provisions of decision 2/CP.17 developed country Parties are requested to submit their first
biennial report (BR1) to the secretariat by 1 January 2014. They have two options to report information
in the BR1: Parties could present the BR1 as an annex to the national communication (NC) or as a
separate report.
In response to request for guidance on reporting of NC and BR by a number of Parties the secretariat
has analysed the information which is required to be presented in the BR and NC, identified the
areas of overlaps and suggested an approach as to how these overlaps could be avoided.
The 
presentation (175 kB) provides a summary of the analysis conducted by the secretariat and presented
at the 10th lead reviewers meeting held in Bonn, Germany, 18-21 March 2013. It provides a
view by the secretariat on the possible approach to report NC6 and BR1 and is not a formal guidance or
recommendation. It is up to a Party to decide if it will report NC6 and BR1 as two separate reports or
BR1 as an annex to NC6 and which option and approach it may take to deal with areas of overlapping
information.
When a Party choose to present its BR as an annex to the NC, it may choose to avoid duplication of
information on similar topics by following two approaches: (1) detailed reporting of the information on
the similar topics in the NC, and cross-referencing to summary of this information in the BR or (2)
provision of summary information on such similar topics in the NC and cross-referencing to detailed
information being provided in the BR. Notwithstanding the differences in these two approaches, the BR
when presented as an annex to the NC, should be possible to be read as a stand-alone document and
should meet all requirements of the UNFCCC biennial reporting guidelines for developed country Parties
(Annex, decision 2/CP.17).
When a Party chooses to report the BR and the NC as separate reports, the reader- friendliness could
be enhanced by indicating which parts are similar in both reports. In any case, provision of
complete, transparent, accurate, comparable and consistent information in the BR and the common
tabular format is an essential reporting requirement.
Biennial reporting application
The Conference of the Parties, in decision 19/CP.18, requested the UNFCCC secretariat to develop a
test version of an electronic reporting application for the common tabular format (BR CTF) for
developed country Parties, by May 2013 and to finalize the development by July 2013.
The BR CTF application has been released on 22 July 2013, for use by Parties to report their common
tabular formats of biennial reports.
The advanced version of the application which allows compilers to import data from excel to BR CTF
tables 2-9 was released on 18 October. Noted issues are being fixed on a regular
basis. Currently, the BR CTF has over 200 users from 43 Parties and is supported by the
secretariat's help desk <<a href="mailto:reporting_review@unfccc.int">reporting_review@unfccc.int>.
The user manual is available on the landing page of the application. If you have any questions or
suggestions, please contact <<a href="mailto:reporting_review@unfccc.int">reporting_review@unfccc.int>.
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