Greenhouse gas emissions and removals in land and forests

Albania, as a non-Annex I country to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has been developing an inventory of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by source and removals by sink, covering the period from 1990 to 2019, as part of its national communications on climate change. The inventory includes estimates of GHG emissions from LULUCF. It is important to mention that the LULUCF sector became the highest source of removals (largest sink) during 2008 and 2009 and that emissions from the LULUCF sector decreased sharply in the same period. In terms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂eq), the contribution of the LULUCF sector increased during 2010–2012, from 1 728 kt CO₂eq to 5 450 kt CO₂eq, followed by a large decrease in 2013 (to 1 429 kt CO₂eq). The GHG emissions from the LULUCF sector decreased during 2013–2019. Considering the ratio between the increase in forest biomass and the reduction caused by deforestation and forest fires, overall, forests were GHG emitters during 2009–2017. During 2018 and 2019, forests started to become GHG absorbers due to a reduction in the loss of forest biomass.