Bengaluru: In 2020, India emitted 2,959 million tonnes (mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. The national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that year had decreased by 7.93% when compared to 2019. In the same year, India’s forest and tree cover along with other land uses sequestered around 522 mt of carbon dioxide equivalent, which brought about a 22% reduction in the country’s carbon dioxide emissions when compared to 2019.

These are some of the details that India reported to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on December 30. But what is this report, what does it mean, and why is it important?

What are biennial update reports?

Biennial update reports (BUR) are documents that countries that are party to the Paris Agreement of 2015 submit to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which implements the goals of the agreement.

According to the UNFCCC, a BUR should contain “updates of national Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventories, including a national inventory report and information on mitigation actions, needs and support received.” These have to be calculated using the guidelines specified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). BURs are also meant to provide updates on actions taken by the country to implement the guidelines of the convention, including the status of its GHG emissions and removals of carbon sinks as well as actions it has taken to reduce emissions or enhance sinks. Forests, for instance, are a carbon sink, as they help sequester carbon from the atmosphere by trapping them as carbon in trees.

A BUR can provide an update of the most recently submitted national communication (reports by member parties that include an inventory of certain anthropogenic emissions by sources and removal of sinks of all greenhouse gases, and steps taken by the country to implement the guidelines of the convention).

While BURs can be an update to the national communication submitted by a country, they can also be stand-alone documents. While all parties have to submit a BUR every two years, the UNFCCC permits

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