Greenhouse gas emissions and removals in land and forests

The land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector represented a greenhouse gas (GHG) sink during 1990–2022. While the LULUCF sink capacity generally followed an upward trend, in years of exceptionally extensive forest fires (2000, 2007, 2016 and 2021), the trend was broken. Overall, the sink capacity of the LULUCF sector increased by 95.6% between 1990 and 2022.

Forest land is an important contributor to sink capacity. Land that has been converted to forest represented a net sink throughout the inventory period. Meanwhile, existing forest land represented a sink in almost all years, except some specific ones in which it represented a net source, primarily due to significant forest fire impacts.

Existing cropland and existing grassland were consistent sinks over 1990–2022. For existing cropland, national data are limited to area only, so all emission/removal factors used in the calculations of GHG source and sink estimates are default data.

During 1990–2022, wetland and settlements represented minor GHG sources. Land categorised as ‘other’ represented a net source of emissions for the whole inventory period, except 2020–2022, in which emissions did not occur.