Background: 

From July 2023 to January 2024, representatives of the five countries, namely Azerbaijan, Georgia, Japan, Moldova, and Uzbekistan, successfully completed the MLP for reporting of mitigation actions in the energy sector. From May 2024, the same countries plan to participate in the second phase of the MLP on reporting of mitigation actions in the agriculture sector. The second phase of the MLP will:

• Include a reporting exercise of common tabular format (CTF)-5 (i.e. Mitigation policies and measures, actions and plans) in the agriculture sector. 
• Organize its main meeting in-person in summer to allow deep discussions among participants. 
• Should firmly contribute to the countries’ submission of First BTRs by the end of 2024.

The main objective of the next phase of MLP is to support the participating countries in their journey towards developing the first BTRs by improving the section on NDC tracking and mitigation reporting for Agriculture. 

Approach and steps towards MLP for Agriculture in 2024:

A series of events are planned for this MLP:

1. Kick-off virtual meeting with all participating countries on May 30th, to discuss the plans and ways of integrating the outputs of this MLP in the BTRs. Determine a set of tasks and exercises.
2. Main meeting with all participating countries on July 30th in Baku, Azerbaijan, to present the key findings of the countries' exercises on NDC tracking and mitigation actions for Agriculture.
3. Follow-up virtual meeting by the end of September.  

This in-country support for Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan are expected to finish by the end of July 2024. 

Over the duration of this MLP programme for Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan and Japan, the following meetings have been held:

Kick-off meeting (30 May 2024, virtually), with the aim to discuss the detailed plan of the second phase of MLP in support of the countries’ submission of First BTRs by the end of 2024 and to re-confirm the countries interest in reporting for enhanced mitigation actions for Agriculture.

The main take-away from this meeting are:

• All participating countries are on track with developing their first BTR
• Agriculture is one of the main emitting sectors in all participating countries. In Agriculture, methane emissions are very high and there is a chance to use various mitigation measures and policies which help to reduce these emissions to achieve the global temperature goal. 
• Most of the mitigation actions for Agricultural sector will encompass actions for land management, manure management and cattle breeding. Japan is the only one to add onto rice cultivation.

Main meeting (30 July 2024, Baku, Azerbaijan), which aimed to provide the opportunity for the country experts to discuss each country’s reporting exercise in detail and next steps for the countries to submit the First BTRs by the end of 2024, continuously improve BTRs over time, and link this information to the implementation of NDCs. 

The main take-away from this meeting, are:

• All participating countries claim they are ready to develop and submit their 1BTR by December 31, 2024. All of them are at different stage of the progress. Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan are finalizing their national GHG Inventory chapter, Moldova and Georgia are compiling the NDC tracking chapter and Japan is compiling the overall BTR document.
• Although this year MLP, which was focused on Agriculture was quite a challenge (no disaggregated data, no access to internal status of agricultural policies and measures, etc) it was very useful for all participating countries to getting the feedback, clarification and common questions which helped to improving the quality of the reporting on NDC tracking.
• The countries are expected to include Exercise which they performed in MLP (i.e. CTF 5 for Energy and Agriculture, Methodologies and Assumptions for Energy/Agriculture) in their 1BTRs. Although coordination and communication with data providers in the Ministries and departments and private sector, is key to assure transparency and quality of information and reporting. 
• In fact, 1BTR which is expected to be submitted by all participating MLP countries on time, before the end of 2024, will be used as the background and basis for NDC updating process. Whether the countries raise ambitions in their NDC-2025 will to the most extend on the information and results of their 1BTR in 2024.

• Next directions for future collaboration can be: Consideration of other sectors for CTF 5 – LULUCF, IPPU and Waste, or filling in CTF3 (accounting approach in NDC).

  The MLP finished its support to Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan with the closure of the main meeting. However, countries are welcome to address CBIT-GSP and IGES in case they have queries for additional clarification or consultation on this Exercise.