Expert: Guides on climate very useful

By JASON GIMA WURI
and ETHEL NAMURI
THE Papua New Guinea team has learnt a lot about the inventory preparation process and the use of International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines, use of the data workbooks, assessment and questionnaire, an expert says.
A PNG delegate to the COP17 and United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) National Coordinator on PNG Second National Communication attached to the Office of Climate Change and Development (OCCD) Stanley Wapot presented PNG’s experiences at the US Centre during the Conference of Parties 17 climate change summit in Durban, South Africa.
Wapot was invited by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to provide an overview of PNG’s programme.
In his presentation, he highlighted the use of tools from EPA/USAID, and the UNFCCC to work on PNG’s robust and country specific National Inventory Management Systems (to report on greenhouse gas emission).
Wapot said working with technical experts the PNG team had learnt a lot about the inventory preparation process and IPCC guidelines.
“The ALU workbook and questionnaires (ALU and Energy sector) are useful in assessing available data because of their simplicity, showing data sources for each sector (agriculture and land use and land use change and forestry – LULUCF)”.
He said PNG used the EPA data workbooks, worksheets and other tools, which were very useful, and helped them to start on the 2000 GHG Inventory (Tier 1 Level Assessment), which was expected to be completed soon.
He said the ALU workbook was easy for the team to profile and review data.
He said the software was more user-friendly than the UNFCCC software, with information readily available to do calculations.
Wapot said the submission date of PNG’s Second National Communication (SNC) to UNFCCC was by the end of the first quarter 2012.
He said the third National Communication was in draft and “this report puts emphasis on gaps in the GHG inventory, especially on vulnerability and adaptation components”.
 “PNG will explore other components of the ALU software, in the use of GIS maps, mitigation component especially on the country’s REDD programme,” he said.
Wapot said this would be very useful for the UN-REDD project to fill inventory gaps on some of their findings. 
“This programme assists developing countries to improve inventories in the agriculture and forestry sector.
“Papua New Guinea shared its experiences on lessons learned on a national context in developing technical and institutional capacity to prepare a national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory for the country to report on its emissions,” he said.