IV. What You Should Do First

In terms of your own time commitment, you should use the following table as a rough guide to the amount of time you will likely have to commit in order to participate on a review team. All numbers are in terms of working days, which assumes a full 8 hours per day.

Table: Expected time commitments for expert reviewers (working days)

Indirect greenhouse gases (e.g., SO₂, CO, NO_x, and NMVOCs) should NOT be the focus of the review, although time permitting, they may be examined. The focus of your review should be on the direct greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, HFCs, PFCs, and SF₆).

Lastly, your prioritization plan should allocate extra attention to reviewing estimates for the Party’s base year (e.g., 1990) and the most recent reported year. As you review these years, you should give careful consideration to potential biases in a Party’s calculated emission trends.

Before you begin formally conducting your review work, however, you will be asked by the Secretariat to sign an Agreement for Expert Review Services.

This document specifies your duties as a reviewer, with particular attention given to the issue of protecting confidential information provided to your team by a Party.  It also addresses the issue of conflict-of-interest.  Click here to download a copy of this agreement.

You should also be familiar with the UNFCCC procedures and code of practice for the treatment of confidential information for GHG inventories.  You can download a copy of this document here.