SÃO PAULO/BELÉM/PIRACICABA, MAY 29, 2018 – The methodology used by organizations that are part of the Climate Observatory to produce Brazil’s annual greenhouse gas emissions and removals data has been described in an international scientific journal. It is the first scientific article containing the complete step-by-step process of the SEEG (Greenhouse Gas Emissions Estimation System). It was published this Tuesday (29) in the journal Scientific Data. The journal is part of the Nature group, which publishes the world’s leading scientific journal.

Read the study here. (in English).

The 23 authors of the study, led by the coordinator of SEEG, Tasso Azevedo, belong to eight institutions. They explain how estimates of CO2 and other gas emissions are made and updated for the five sectors responsible for emissions in the Brazilian economy (Land Use Change, Agriculture, Energy, Industrial Processes, and Waste), and discuss the importance of public data from official emissions inventories as a reference.

With its publication in an indexed, peer-reviewed journal (the canon of the scientific process), SEEG expands the dissemination of its methodology, which is open and can be replicated, critiqued, and improved by any researcher from anywhere in the world who deals with emissions data.

“This publication consolidates a method that we have seen developed at the Climate Observatory over the last five years to generate reliable, up-to-date and complete information on greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil, which is the 7th largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet,” said Azevedo, who created SEEG in 2012.

“"Beyond technical and scientific rigor, our focus is to disseminate and communicate the country's emissions data in a simple, intuitive, and detailed way to contribute to the design of public policies and actions in the private sector and civil society to put Brazil on the path to a low-carbon economy," he continues.

According to Ciniro Costa Júnior, a researcher in Climate and Agricultural Supply Chains at Imaflora and co-author of the article, the publication of SEEG "highlights the high level of technical capacity built by civil society regarding the issue of greenhouse gas emissions in Brazil and becomes a solid reference to assist in decision-making and planning for the problem of climate change.".

Another co-author, Igor Albuquerque Reis, Climate Change Manager at ICLEI South America, states that the work represents "a validation of the entire process of building this platform and the necessary scientific support to also strengthen SEEG in the academic sphere.".

With its fifth version released in 2017, SEEG is now the largest public database on a country's emissions in the world. It covers all Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions between 1970 and 2016 (except for the land use sector, which has data for the period 1990-2016). On its online platform, it allows searching data by economic sector, segment, year, state, and greenhouse gas for nearly 600 evaluated emission and removal sources. Two products derived from the system, the Electric Monitor and the Agricultural Monitor, These tools allow you to track emissions from these two sectors in near real-time. A third, the MapBiomas, This allows us to understand all land use changes in Brazil from 2000 to 2016. The SEEG methodology has already given rise to emissions monitoring systems from civil society in... Peru and in India.

The SEEG is currently implemented by five institutions: the Institute of Energy and Environment, which estimates emissions from the energy and industrial processes sectors; Imaflora, which calculates emissions from agriculture; Imazon and Ipam, which handle land use estimates; and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, which produces estimates for the waste sector.

In addition to annual data, SEEG also publishes reports with an analysis of the emissions profile and recommendations for public policies. SEEG 5 analytics, The reports, which cover the period up to 2016, will be published weekly between May and July.

ABOUT THE OC:

The Climate Observatory is a network of 44 civil society organizations aiming to discuss climate change in the Brazilian context. Meet our members. here.