Articles 5, 7 and 8 of the Kyoto Protocol address the reporting and review of commitments of Annex I Parties under the Protocol as well as national systems and methodologies for the preparation of greenhouse gas inventories.

Article 5 commits Annex I Parties to having in place, no later than 2007, national systems for the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks (Article 5.1). It also states that, where agreed methodologies (that is, the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, see decision 2/CP.3) are not used to estimate emissions and removals, appropriate "adjustments" should be applied (Article 5.2).

Article 7 requires Annex I Parties to submit annual greenhouse gas inventories, as well as national communications at regular intervals, both including supplementary information to demonstrate compliance with the Protocol. In addition, Article 7 states that the COP/MOP shall decide upon modalities for the accounting of assigned amounts prior to the first commitment period.
Article 8 establishes that the inventories and communications submitted by Annex I Parties will be reviewed by expert review teams.

The Protocol states that guidelines for national systems, adjustments, the preparation of inventories and national communications, as well as for the conduct of expert reviews, should be adopted by COP/MOP 1, and regularly reviewed thereafter.

At COP 4, Parties set a deadline of COP 6 for taking decisions on these guidelines, to be recommended for adoption by COP/MOP 1. Parties reached agreement on a work programme for meeting this deadline at SBSTA/SBI 10 (June 1999).

As part of this work programme, a workshop on methodological issues related to Articles 5, 7 and 8 was held in Bonn on 14-16 March 2000 to initiate the process of consideration of guidelines and guidance under Articles 5, 7 and 8.

At SBSTA 12 (June 2000), Parties reached agreement on guidelines for national systems under Article 5.1 (see annex to the SBSTA 12 report).

Parties continued to work on draft guidelines for the preparation of the information required under Article 7 and for the review under Article 8, as well as on draft guidance on methodologies for adjustments under Article 5.2, at part I of SBSTA 13 (Lyon, Sept). The outcome of the session was draft texts on guidelines under Articles 7 and 8, as well as possible elements for a draft decision (or draft decisions) on all the issues covered by this item (see FCCC/SBSTA/2000/10/Add.3). The SBSTA invited the Chairman to further develop these draft texts before the SBSTA meets again in The Hague in November.

In order to assist the Chairman in further developing the texts, informal consultations took place in Bonn on 6-8 October 2000.