The individual review stage of the overall UNFCCC annual inventory review process is not conducted for Parties that have not submitted a National Inventory Report (NIR). Because documentation and transparency are so critical to the review process, it has been decided by the Parties to the UNFCCC, that it is not practical to conduct a full review without the benefit of a NIR.

However, as you have likely experienced in the past, there is a range in the quality of the documentation in Parties’ NIRs. It is your responsibility, as a reviewer, to consistently evaluate inventory submissions across Parties. Therefore, the inventory submissions you review should be critically assessed based on both the documentation Parties do provide and on any documentation Parties lack.

In other words, you should avoid critiquing the information that a Party’ provides without also considering what information has not been provided. During a review, it is easy to focus on what you see and forget to also consider what is missing from a submission. Parties must be encouraged to provide as transparent an inventory submission as possible.

Specifically, you should check that each Party’s NIR includes a section on changes and recalculations and that it includes a detailed reference section.