Land management faces a series of daunting challenges in the 21st century. These include contributing to
the global mitigation effort and adaptation needed to prevent dangerous climate change, while providing
enough food for a population of 9 billion by 2050 as well as shelter and livelihoods for rural populations
and various ecosystem services. The existing mitigation reporting and accounting arrangements for the
land sector are complex, not applicable to all Parties, and provide limited scope for pursuing more costeffective
accounting approaches that would enable developing countries to address conflicting policy
objectives such as addressing climate change while increasing agricultural output. This paper has two aims.
The first is to lay out possible elements of a long-term vision for the post-2020 reporting and accounting
framework for emissions and removals from the land sector, building on existing experience with reporting
and accounting as well as previous studies. The second is to identify possible steps that could be taken at
COP 20 in 2014, COP 21 in 2015, and in 2016-2020 to put Parties on a pathway towards realising this
vision.
