The Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP)
The Protocols to the LRTAP Convention require Parties to report two types of information covering the two types of substantive obligations (to reduce emissions and to adopt relevant policies, strategies, and measures): (i) information on strategies, policies, and programmes; and (ii) information on emissions.
The information on strategies and policies is gathered by means of a questionnaire every two years. The questionnaire aims to help Parties comply with their reporting requirements and has been recently revised to improve the compliance review by the Implementation Committee. To reduce the reporting burden on Parties, the questionnaire is Internet-based and Parties have the opportunity each year either to update their answers or to confirm the validity of the information submitted for the previous reporting round.
The information on emissions is reported annually. Guidelines for Estimating and Reporting of Emission Data have been adopted under the Convention. The Guidelines provide general guidance on minimum reporting, as well as information on additional reporting, recalculations, uncertainties, and data quality. The reporting tables annexed to the Guidelines aim to harmonize the nomenclatures for reporting under the Convention with those used by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The questionnaire was revised recently so that it more closely reflects the specific obligations under the MEAs. By making the format of the questionnaire more focused on article-by-article reporting, the new questionnaire is designed to better facilitate compliance.
The information thus obtained serves as a basis to assess the effectiveness of the measures to achieve improvement in air quality and to review compliance by Parties with their emission reduction obligations.
For more information, see http://www.unece.org/env/lrtap/welcome.html
The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus Convention)
In order to facilitate submission of national implementation reports in a standardized format, the Secretariat of the Aarhus Convention developed an on-line reporting format. To complete the form, the national focal point logs on to the UNECE web site. The text of the report becomes public only after the final version has been submitted to the Secretariat.
For more information, see http://unece.unog.ch/enhs/pp/ or contact public.participation@unece.org