Analysis of LULUCF Accounting Rules after 2012

Abstract

Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities can allow Annex I parties in the Kyoto Protocol to decrease their carbon emission reduction pressure, and comparably expanding more emission space for their domestic industries and energy production. The loopholes resulted from LULUCF activity types and specific accounting methods are always argued among the different parties, particularly including harvested wood products, influences of force majeure, threshold values of the reference level, and gross-net or net-net accounting methods. For estimating uncertainties in accounting loopholes, and to avoid that developed countries take advantage of the accounting loopholes of LULUCF to decrease their emission reduction pressure, the LULUCF data submitted from the main developed countries in Annex I, including EU 27, Canada, Japan, and Russia, were collected. According to the analysis of these data, the loopholes influence the accounting results of LULUCF. The results show that the uncertainty of harvested wood products is excessive. The carbon sink produced by LULUCF activities will increase averagely by at least 30% without force majeure. The threshold values of the reference level of carbon sink should be set to a higher level. The net-net accounting method might be more suitable for LULUCF after 2012. CitationLiu, S., Y. Li, Q. Gao, et al., 2011: Analysis of LULUCF accounting rules after 2012. Adv. Clim. Change Res., 2(4), doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1248.2011.00178.