Workshop: Improving Greenhouse Gas Inventories for the Livestock Sector in Kenya

23 January, 2018

8:30

16:00

Nairobi, Kenya

Panafric Hotel

By invitation only

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The Paris Agreement places a special emphasis on transparency (Article. 13).The purpose of the transparency framework for action is to provide a clear understanding of the action, to track progress towards nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and to inform the “global stocktake” process that will track progress against the targets and allow countries to make new and more ambitious pledges. In addition, countries will have to provide national inventories of emissions (by sinks and sources) and information necessary to track progress made in implementing and achieving NDCs. Inventories are central to tracking progress in reducing emissions, with each country required to regularly produce a national inventory report.

The State Department of Livestock of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries is taking a lead to transform its livestock sector to a low-emission development pathway, while improving the livelihoods of the livestock producers. More productive and efficient farm systems will generally produce food at much lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of product. Kenya has developed a nationally appropriate mitigation action (NAMA) for its dairy sector that is expected to reach 227,000 dairy producers and yield an additional 6.6 billion litres of milk p.a. while reducing GHG emissions by 8.8 Mt CO2 eq. However, Kenya, still relies on the use of simple methods (commonly referred to as Tier 1) for estimating livestock emissions in their GHG inventories and therefore will be unable to capture and report on the mitigation associated with the NAMA.

While Tier 1, requires the least resources, it is unable to reflect a country’s unique circumstances or trends over time other than changes in total animal numbers. More advanced methods (Tier 2 and 3) requires more detailed data that capture specifics of production systems in countries. Crucially, they also reflect changes in emissions that result from improvements in the productivity and efficiency and enable policy makers to target and design efforts for GHG mitigation.

The State Department of Livestock, Kenya in collaboration with the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are organizing a stakeholder’s workshop to initiate an institutional and stakeholder dialogue on livestock inventory improvement. The workshop seeks to demonstrate the benefits of higher tier GHG inventories for livestock systems, and to identify and define an action plan for Kenya to improve its livestock inventory.

Over the longer-term this process is intended to enhance the country’s international reporting obligations, support Kenya in developing well quantified, realistic and ambitious GHG reduction targets.