3 October 2011: The UNFCCC Secretariat has published the report of the technical assessment of the forest management reference level submission of Estonia submitted in 2011 (FCCC/TAR/2011/EST).

The report covers the technical assessment of the submission of Estonia on its forest management reference level (FMRL), submitted in accordance with decision 2/CMP.6 (The Cancun Agreements: Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF)). Estonia has proposed an FMRL of –2.741 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2 equivalent) per year applying the first-order decay function for harvested wood products and –1.742 Mt CO2 equivalent per year assuming instantaneous oxidation of harvested wood products.

In the report, the expert review team (ERT) that undertook the technical assessment concluded that Estonia’s use of an approach common to the other EU member States to calculate its FMRL further strengthened the comparability of its proposed FMRL. The report also highlights that some inconsistencies in the data used as inputs to the models and in those used for preparing the greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory have been detected during the technical assessment and were addressed by Estonia when rerunning the models to prepare the revised FMRL value, and this figure was then used as the proposed FMRL for Estonia for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. In assessing the revised FMRL value, the ERT noted that it addressed all inconsistencies previously found. [Publication: Report of Technical Assessment of the Forest Management Reference Level Submission of Estonia Submitted in 2011]