The purpose of this template is to help you establish or improve the institutional arrangements (IA) that are the foundation of your national GHG inventory management system. The template helps countries develop, maintain, and improve management and reporting of inventory arrangements and is consistent with guidance under the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF)1 for national GHG inventories. Institutional arrangements are formal or procedural agreements2 between the lead inventory agency, national inventory management team, and other institutions supporting inventory compilation (e.g., providing data, estimating emissions or removals, performing quality control). Your country’s IAs define the roles and responsibilities associated with preparing the national inventory, including which agencies and experts will provide what information and what tasks they will perform. This template will help your current and future inventory teams:

• Document all parties involved in the national inventory, and their roles and arrangements by sector,
• Archive key contacts for activity data for each sector or category included your inventory,
• Record the inventory schedule and coordinate future inventories,
• Assess how existing arrangements can be improved, and document the proposed improvements,
• Communicate your arrangements externally, such as to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and
• Inform new team members of existing IAs.

You may find that using the Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) supporting template from the tool helps you formalize your institutional arrangements. The MoC template provides the parties to the MoC with a clear format for describing mutual objectives, shared and differentiated responsibilities and activities, conditions for meeting and corresponding, points of contact, and the duration of the arrangement.