WMO Launches Global Guidelines for Cities to Standardize Greenhouse Gases (GHG) Emissions Measurement
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities | SDG 13: Climate Action
Institutions: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), under its Integrated Global Greenhouse Gas Information System (IG3IS), has released the Urban Greenhouse Gas Emission Observation and Monitoring Good Research Practice Guidelines, 2025 edition. As urban centers are responsible for an estimated 70% of global CO2 emissions, the guidelines provide a critical roadmap for transitioning beyond general inventory-based estimates to using reliable, science-based information for effective climate action.
The guidelines set out a clear course for this transformation, emphasizing the following key recommendations and policy shifts:
Core Recommendation (Methodological Shift): The primary technical shift is the call to move away from reliance solely on activity data toward combining atmospheric observations (direct measurement of GHG concentrations) with activity data and advanced modeling approaches. This rigorous approach, which includes 31 distinct technical quantification approaches, allows for the precise attribution of emissions by sector and source at the urban scale.
Activity data is the input information used to quantify emissions by measuring the scale of human actions that produce GHGs, such as the volume of fuel consumed for transportation, the amount of electricity used for industry, or the tonnage of waste generated.
Standardization and Transparency: The guidelines establish international, transparent standards against which cities can evaluate the quality and credibility of their emissions data. This allows decision-makers to accurately track progress toward reduction targets and identify successful mitigation efforts.
Governance and Collaboration: Cities must adopt a demand-driven approach, tailoring GHG information to stakeholder needs (e.g., tracking trends, identifying point sources). This requires fostering collaboration between governments, the private sector, and researchers to ensure the information guides valuable emission-reduction actions.
This guideline is highly relevant to Indian cities (which are major sources of GHG emissions) and the MoEFCC. It offers a standardized, scientific methodology to quantify urban emissions accurately, enabling targeted mitigation strategies and assisting city and state governments in tracking their sub-national contributions to Indiaβs Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
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