VII. Writing Guidelines: What Should your Final Review Report Look Like?

It is the responsibility of the UNFCCC Secretariat to select the experts to participate on each review team (with a geographical balance of Annex I and non-Annex I experts) and schedule each review. The Secretariat will also assist in the final editing of your review reports prior to their publication.

However, the final review report for each Party is the collective responsibility of your entire review team. The Secretariat is not responsible for the content of your review report! Once you have completed each report, it will be published by the Secretariat on the UNFCCC website with your name along with the names of your fellow team members on it as the “authors.” You will be required to prepare a separate report for each Party’s submission that you have reviewed (up to 8 for the Centralized, up to 5 for Desk, and 1 for In-Country reviews).

In other words, you are responsible for the quality of the UNFCCC inventory review process. This is an extremely important responsibility and one you should take very seriously.

Your primary reference for preparing the draft report for each Party is the UNFCCC Review Guidelines. These guidelines describe the overall content of a review report for the individual review stage of the UNFCCC review process. In general, the reports you prepare should contain an objective, technical, and factual assessment of each Party’s inventory submission’s adherence to the UNFCCC Reporting Guidelines, the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines, and the IPCC Good Practice Guidance. Your reports should not contain any political judgments or statements!

You should also remember that the information you obtain during the review should not be used for personal benefit. You must not disclose any confidential data that a Party may provide your review team. In other words, you should conduct yourself with a high degree of professionalism.

Click here to open the UNFCCC Review Guidelines.