Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Supplemental Guidance for Forests and Trees

Greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are essential tools to help cities act against climate change. However, many cities are missing a critical element of these inventories: forests and trees. A lack of detailed guidance on how to estimate these emissions and reductions has been a primary reason for this gap.

World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (C40) and ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have partnered to publish supplemental guidance to the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPC). The Supplemental Guidance for Forests and Trees explains how cities, towns, counties, or other subnational jurisdictions (collectively called “communities”) can include GHG emissions and removals from forests and trees in their GHG inventories. This guidance offers communities a robust, transparent, and globally applicable method to consistently identify, calculate, and report on GHG emissions and removals by forests and trees within communities’ boundaries.

David Gibbs, Nancy Harris and John-Rob Pool