The Role of Sustainable Land Management for Climate ... - CAADP

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national carbon or GHG accounting approach would be used to monitor and verify emissions
reductions below the targets. Suggestions of this nature have been proposed by a few groups
(e.g., Trines, et al. 2006; The Terrestrial Carbon Group 2008).
This approach would have the advantage of being comprehensive, including all GHG
sources and sinks, including AFOLU, REDD and others. If offsets across different sources and
sinks within and across countries are allowed, this would promote use of the most cost effective
ways of reducing GHG emissions. By using national level accounting and including all
countries in the system, problems of leakages of emissions within and across countries would be
reduced. To the extent that baseline emission targets are well justified and reductions relative to
those baselines real and verifiable, additionality of payments would be assured.
However, there would be substantial challenges to overcome in order to enact and
implement such an approach. Reaching agreement on country-specific GHG targets would be a
major political challenge. Compounding this would be the technical difficulties of reliably
measuring or estimating current and projected future GHG emissions, and political and
administrative difficulties of achieving real emission reductions in ways that benefit poor people
and avoid negative environmental tradeoffs. Assuring the additionality of payments for
reductions below target GHG emissions levels would be difficult, especially where the technical
and administrative difficulties are major hurdles. Absence of solid scientific data and consensus
on the GHG emission impacts of various AFOLU practices or other activities in different
contexts also could undermine confidence in the approach. These difficulties are likely to be
especially challenging in the least developed countries where data, technical and administrative
capacities are very limited.
Given the challenges as well as potential of such an approach, it would be advisable to
assess the potential of this approach in more detail, considering different options for its use. For
example, considerations of political and technical feasibility may argue for limiting the
application of this approach, at least initially, to certain countries and certain activities. If the
feasibility of the approach could be established on such a pilot basis, it could subsequently be
expanded to more countries and activities as warranted by the methods and capacities available.
Increase adaptation funds
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