Supplementary Information:

THE ROLE OF THE LAND USE, LAND USE CHANGE AND FORESTRY SECTOR IN ACHIEVING ANNEX I REDUCTION PLEDGES

SI.1 Detailed estimated potential credits from forest management

Table SI-1Detailed estimated potential credits (–) from forest management (FM) by Annex I Parties in the period 2013-2020.

Country / Basis for setting FM-RLs / FM emissions (+) or removals (–), Mt CO2 a / Harvesta / Expected potential credits (–), Mt CO2
Average 2000–2009 / FM-RLs agreed in Durban / Projection 2013–2020 / Assumed in 2013-2020
(million m3) / Approximate increase compared to 2000–2009 (%) / Resulting from
–10% harvestb / Total creditsc
Australia / Projection / 0 / 5 / 5 / 18 / 0% / –6 / –6
Belarus / 1990 / –29 / –30 / –30 / 16 / 25% / –3 / –3
Canada / Projection / –135 / –71 / –71 / 176 / –5% / –22 / –21
Croatia / Projection / –8 / –6 / –6 / 7 / 50% / –1 / –1
EU / Projection / –387 / –253 / –253 / 559 / 14% / –52 / –52
Iceland / Projection / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0% / 0 / 0
Japan / – / –36 / 0 / –45 / 15 / 0% / –2 / –44
New Zealand / Projection / 4 / 11 / 11 / 19 / 25% / –2 / –2
Norway / 1990 / –29 / –11 / –25 / 12 / 20% / –1 / –1
Russia / 1990 / –415 / –116 / –420 / 247 / 50% / –33 / –117
Switzerland / Projection / –1 / 0 / 0 / 7.4 / 10% / –1 / –1
Ukraine / Projection / –55 / –49 / –49 / 15 / 0% / –2 / –2
CP1 Parties d / –1091 / –521 / –884 / 1091 / 17% / –127 / –251
Likely CP2 Parties e / –505 / –334 / –348 / 653 / 14% / –69 / –69
Countries with FM–RLs based on projections / –582 / –363 / –363 / 801 / 9% / –87 / –85
Countries with FM–RLs based on 1990, andJapan / –509 / –158 / –521 / 290 / 44% / –39 / –166

a Based on information provided by the Annex I Parties to UNFCCC ( up to December 2011, in some case further elaborated in the JRC LULUCF TOOL(Grassi, 2012). For Canada, the average 2000–2009 is an approximated estimate without natural disturbances. All estimates exclude harvested wood products, except for Australia.

b Estimates come: for Australia, from the scaling of results of Macintosh (2011); for EU, from sensitivity analysis on the FM sink (excluding carbon storage in harvested wood products) using -10% harvest in Böttcheret al. (2012); for all other countries, a crude estimate was obtained by converting the expected -10% of harvest into CO2 using biomass conversion and expansion factors and carbon fraction from IPCC (2006).

c The total credits are calculated as: (average projections 2013-2020) - (FM-RL) + (credits resulting from a reduction of 10% in harvest). A cap on credits equal to 3.5% of base year emissions is applied.Without the cap, FM credits relative to 1990 emissionswould bealmost 30% for Norway and 10% for Russia.

d Sum of Parties above.

eSum of Parties above excluding Canada, Japan and Russia.

SI.2 Uncertainties

The uncertainties associated with the estimates presented in this paper may be related to: (i) the methods and input data used for LULUCF estimates in GHG inventories, and (ii) the assumptions made in countries’ projections (e.g. future harvest rate) and/or made in this paper (e.g. correcting factors, future harvest rates).

Most Annex I countries report uncertainties in the range of 20-40% for historical GHG emissions and removals from forest. For forest land remaining forest land, the uncertainty is typically lower than 25% where input data comes from well-established forest inventories or detailed models driven by high-resolution data , but may be significantly higher with input data of poor spatial and temporal resolution. For forest conversions, the reported uncertainty is around 30% when AR and D represent relatively small and scattered events (i.e., not easily captured with forest inventories or with statistics), but may be 10-15% where input data is more certain (e.g. forest plantations). Moreover, several countries report the difficulty of performing a full uncertainty analysis, which often is largely based on expert judgment and therefore rather uncertain itself.

With regard to the assumptions made in countries’ FM projections, the sensitivity analysis performed by Böttcher et al. (2012) for EU countries indicate that, on average, a 10% variation of harvest is associated with about 20% variation of the sink in the short term (up to 2020). Given the strong dependence of the harvest assumptions on macroeconomic parameters, and the high uncertainty of the future evolution of these parameters, it can be concluded that the uncertainty associated with harvest assumptions is certainly high. Where the sink is mainly associated with plantations (e.g. AR in New Zealand), the uncertainty associated with different assumptions appears relatively low in the short term but very high after 2020[1]. Where natural disturbances may play an important role (e.g. Canada, Australia, Russia, some EU country), the uncertainties of the future forest sink should be considered very high; however, the provision on natural disturbances in the LULUCF decision agreed in Durban (UNFCCC 2012a) should in theory considerably limit the impact of these uncertainties on the future credits and debits.

To explore the impact of the assumptions made in this paper, we simulated more aggressive mitigation scenarios (likely not achievable in all Parties):

-The impact of different correcting factors for AR (1.2) and D (0.6): the estimates for the likely CP2 Parties would change from -107 MtCO2 to -110 MtCO2 (AR) and from +63 MtCO2 to +47 MtCO2 (D). Overall, it equals19 MtCO2of potential extra credits.

- The impact of a 20% reduction of future harvest for FM: the estimates for the likely CP2 Parties would change from -69 MtCO2 to -104 MtCO2, i.e. and extra35 MtCO2 of potential credits mainly attributable to EU (24 MtCO2) and Australia (6 MtCO2)[2].

The combined effect of the two scenarios above would produce a level of creditsequal to 166 MtCO2for the likely CP2 Parties (2.3% of base year emissions, about 50% more than the credits indicated in table 2) and 333 MtCO2for the CP1 Parties (2.6% of base year emissions, about 25% more than the credits indicated in table 2)

Finally, it should be considered that the impact of the uncertainties may also depend on the accounting rule. For a gross-net type of accounting (AR and D), future credits and debits are affected by both the methods and input data used and the assumptions made. For a net-net type of accounting (like FM reference level), the uncertainties are mainly related to the assumptions made because– as long as methodological consistency is ensured[3] – the impact of any methodological error in FM reference level will be in most cases largely included in the future accounting as well.

References:

Böttcher H, Verkerk PJ, Gusti M, Havlik P, Grassi G (2012) Projection of the future EU forest CO2 sink as affected by recent bioenergy policies using two advanced forest management models. Global Change Biology - Bioenergy, doi: 10.1111/j.1757-1707.2011.01152.x.

Grassi G. (2012), JRC LULUCF tool, version 18 June 2012,

IPCC (2006) 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan.

JointResearchCentre(JRC)EuropeanCommission (2011) JRC LULUCF tool version 8 December 2011,

Macintosh AK (2011) Potential carbon credits from reducing native forest harvesting in Australia. ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy, the Australian National University, CCLP Working Paper Series 2011/1, Australia.

UNFCCC (2012) Decision 2/CMP.7 Land use, land-use change and forestry,

[1]

[2]In these calculations, the impact of the FM cap was considered for all EU countries. For most of the other Parties, the extra reduction of harvest produced little or no effectbecause of the FM cap.

[3]According to LULUCF text agreed in Durban (UNFCCC 2012), Parties shall ensure methodological consistency between FMRL and the future accounting. For instance, if data used to establish the FMRL are subject to recalculations, or a different method is used, a technical correction shall be applied to include in the accounting the impact of the recalculations.