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Under the Kyoto Protocol, nearly all industrialized countries and economies in transition (“Annex I countries”) agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to at least 5 percent below the level of 1990. Emissions from a variety of sectors including energy, industry, agriculture, and waste management are taken into account for compliance with Kyoto emission targets. Activities from land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) make up another category of GHG emissions and removals that also have to be accounted for, at least to a limited extent. Parties agreed on the emission reduction targets of the Kyoto Protocol before they decided whether and how LULUCF could be used to fulfill those targets. At the time of the negotiations of the Kyoto Protocol, scientific knowledge about the role of LULUCF was limited and negotiators were poorly informed about the estimation of emissions and removals in the land-use sector. It was clear, however, that the inclusion or exclusion of “sinks”—a shorthand term referring to the way terrestrial vegetation and soils take up carbon—would signi ficantly affect the emission budgets of the parties, which made these negotiations difficult. Some parties and NGOs saw the option to account for sinks as an unfortunate loophole that could be used to water down the actual emission reduction efforts of the protocol. For supporters, the inclusion of sinks was an economic necessity for achieving Kyoto targets, and some pointed to the massive quantities of carbon exchanged between the atmosphere, vegetation, and soils every year, an Forestry Projects under the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation: Rules and Regulations sebastian m. scholz and martina jung 6 71 amount thirty times greater than the emissions from fossil fuels.1 They were concerned that by omitting sinks, a major exchange of carbon, which could swamp any gains made through activities under the Kyoto Protocol, would be ignored. An eventful and at times controversial negotiation process followed that ultimately led to a complicated accounting system for LULUCF.2 It took almost six years of assessment and negotiation to agree on specific LULUCF rules for the project-based mechanisms. Negotiators finally reached a consensus at the ninth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 9) in December 2003. At this conference the international community finalized an agreement on the definitions and modalities for the use of afforestation and reforestation (AR) projects in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Before COP 9, in the so-called Marrakech Accords, parties had already limited the use of LULUCF in the CDM to AR projects only. In addition, the use of forestry projects in developing countries was restricted to meet no more than 1 percent of Annex I Parties’ Kyoto obligations.3 At present, LULUCF projects are in principle allowed under the two flexible mechanisms, Joint Implementation (JI) and the CDM. In the following sections, we first survey the general differences between LULUCF projects under JI and CDM and then discuss the rules and regulations in greater detail. LULUCF under JI and CDM: The Most Important Rules and Modalities Industrialized parties to the Kyoto Protocol measure progress toward meeting their emission reduction targets by preparing national inventories, which are required to account for LULUCF-related activities within the respective country. In general , parties account for emissions and removals from land use, land-use change, and forestry on the basis of different activities, not specific land areas. Articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol define those activities. According to article 3.3, parties are obliged to account for afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation that started on or after January 1, 1990. Article 3.4 introduces additional LULUCFrelated activities that parties can account for on a voluntary basis in the first Kyoto commitment period, which runs from 2008 to 2012. These activities are forest management, revegetation, cropland management, and grazing land management started on or after January 1, 1990.4 Parties have to decide on the inclusion of activities under article 3.4 before the start of the commitment period. Carbon dioxide removals accounted for in one commitment period can potentially be reversed at a later time. Therefore, the national inventory must reflect these changes and all activities a country elects to account for under article 3.4, not only in the first commitment period but also in future commitment periods. Furthermore, accounting of GHG removals from forest management activities under article 3.4 and credits acquired from LULUCF projects under JI in other 72 sebastian...

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