Archiving guidance for a national greenhouse gas inventory

Aiming to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in 2015 Parties adopted the Paris Agreement, and through it established an enhanced transparency framework (ETF). Countries are now actively engaged in establishing the necessary arrangements to implement the ETF. A series of rules known as modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPGs, Dec. 18/CMA.1) were established to operationalize the ETF. A GHG inventory (GHGI) is a collection of estimates of GHG emissions and removals that are key for understanding countries' contribution to climate change and are fundamental for the tracking of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) implementation and progress. To ensure that countries can report on the GHG emissions and removals every two years, it is fundamental to set up adequate institutional arrangements and define a well structured archiving system. In addition, the MPGs indicates that each Party shall report on its archiving of all information. This is a step-by-step guidance that helps countries to define the structure for the archiving system and appropriate procedures for archiving inventory data and information, preventing the loss of information and facilitating the preparation of future GHG inventories.