This report covers the technical assessment of the submission of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on a voluntary basis, on its proposed forest reference emission level (FREL), in accordance with decision 13/CP.19 and in the context of results-based payments. The FREL proposed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo covers the activity “reducing emissions from deforestation”, which is among the activities included in decision 1/CP.16,
paragraph 70. In its submission, the Party developed a national FREL. The FREL presented in the original submission based on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions during the reference period corresponds to 351,410,000 t CO2 eq for the period 2000–2010 and 829,560,000 t CO2 eq for the period 2010–2014. The FREL was constructed based on a simple linear extrapolation of historical emissions from 2000–2014 for the period 2015–2019, resulting in average emissions of 1,181,641,363 t CO2 eq/year. As a result of the facilitative process during the technical assessment, the FREL was modified to an average of 1,078,235,017 t CO2 eq/year for the period 2015–2019. The assessment team notes that the data and information used by the Democratic Republic of the Congo in constructing its FREL are transparent, complete and in overall accordance with the guidelines contained in the annex to decision 12/CP.17. This report contains the assessed FREL and a few areas identified by
the assessment team for future technical improvement, in accordance with the provisions on the scope of the technical assessment contained in the annex to decision 13/CP.19.