The Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA) has revealed the constraints and gaps in collecting data for a National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGHGI).
CCDA national communication officer Larsen Daboyan highlighted that there’s lack of funding for effectively collecting quality data throughout Papua New Guinea.
The agriculture, forestry and land-use sector is a key source of greenhouse gas emissions for PNG.
PNG is among many countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that rectified the Paris Agreement and must report on their status on the NGHGI.
The Government, through CCDA in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is working to complete a quality assurance process of the GHG estimations from the agriculture, forest and other land uses (AFOLU) sector to form the NGHGI for PNG.
PNG is a country with still considerable extensions of forest resources with around 33 million hectares of forest, about 75 percent of total country area and around 1.2 million hectares of agricultural area.
Daboyan explained that there is also lack of activity data such as dead organic matter, dead wood, litter, soil organic matter and harvested wood products for the land use and land use change and forest (LULUCF).
He said there’s unavailability of data such as manure left on pastures, fertilizer types and quantity used plus the methods of manure management and the application of liming and urea.
There’s also lack of capacity building at both national and provincial level.
Daboyan said there’s a need for data management for consistency and quality data provision and development of agriculture data base for PNG.
He added that stakeholder collaboration, strengthen institutional arrangement and partnership is vital.