Options for including land use in a climate agreement post-2012: improving the Kyoto Protocol approach

Many pathways have been proposed for including land use in a post-2012 climate agreement. Several involve new accounting structures which are quite different from the rules established in the Marrakech Accords and related decisions. However, a mechanism based largely on the structure agreed for the first commitment period also has its benefits. This paper discusses the weaknesses of the current system of land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) accounting in the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period, and proposes a mechanism based on that existing structure, but with modifications to address the weaknesses.