The FAOSTAT Emissions Data
Francesco N Tubielloand Environment Statistics TeamOCB Connection Talks, Dec 16th 2021

Rationale• Provide global knowledge products that enable analysis of foodand agriculture trends at regional and world level (e.g., IPCCAR6)• Disseminate data and tools in support of country QAQC andvalidation processes for their National Greenhouse gas
inventories (NGHGI)• Enhance capacity of countries to collect, analyse and report
data on food and agriculture and food systems, consistently withFAO, UNFCCC and SDG processes

Defining Food Systems within Food and Agriculture
Food Systems View

Farm gate

Land use change

Pre- and post-production

FAOSTAT Emissions Shares Domain stats
Emissions and Shares

Greenhouse gas

CO2; N2O; CH4; F-gases

Spatial Coverage

194 Countries and 36 Territories

Temporal Coverage

1990-2019

Thematic Coverage

All IPCC sectors, all food system processes

Gt CO2eq emissions/removals
-0.5

-1.3

-2.0

-2.8-3.5

Waste Disposal

HouseholdConsumption

RetailTransport

PackagingFood Processing

Fertilizers
Manufacturing

On-farm energy use

Forestland

Net Forest conversion

Fires

Drained organic soils

Rice Cultivation

Crop ResiduesSynthetic Fertilizers

Livestock Manure

Enteric Fermentation

4.0

3.3

2.5

1.8

1.00.3

Comparing Global Numbers FAO/UNFCCCAnnex I

Non-Annex IAnnex I and Non-annex I emissions and shares
Food shares:

24%

27%

60%

Annex I to the UNFCCC: developed countries; non-Annex I: developing40%

Regional trends in emissions shares, 1990-2019

Top ten countries food systems emissions, 2019

9Concluding Remarks and Discussion Points• FAOSTAT data contribute to global reporting
assessments, including IPCC Assessment Reports• FAO data can be used as source of data when national
data are not available.
• FAOSTAT data are already used by many countries(including EU-27) in climate reporting, in particular tosupport quality assurance and quality control processes,
as recommended by IPCC.
• FAOSTAT has a user friendly data platform freely
available to users worldwide.

Thank you!
francesco.tubiello@fao.org

FAOSTAT Data Briefs:
GHG AFOLU:
https://www.fao.org/3/cb5293en/cb5293en.pdf
Forest Carbon Fluxes:
https://www.fao.org/3/cb1578en/cb1578en.pdf
Food Systems GHG:
https://www.fao.org/3/cb7514en/cb7514en.pdf

Land use:
https://www.fao.org/3/cb6033en/cb6033en.pdf
Land Use and Cover:
https://www.fao.org/3/cb2860en/cb2860en.pdf

Methods: three steps to quantifying FS emissions
IPCC (2006) Guidelines: Emissions = EF * AD * fs

AD: Activity Data

FAO, UNSD Energy and Industry, IEA, FAO, World Bank
1990-2019
Examples: fossil fuel use by type in manufacturing,households, waste disposal, etc.

EF: Emission
Factors

IPCC (2006), IEA, Examples: grid emission factors,combustion coefficientsFs = Food Shares

IPCC (2006; 2019), EU-JRC, Literature search fromacademia and government, FAO sources (2011)

Comparison to UNFCCC reporting• AnnexIdataarecomplete(legalrequirements). Close agreement with FAO• Non-Annex I data have significant gaps—
still good agreement with FAO at individuallevel• FAOSTAT

emissions

databaseisincreasingly used internationally as a useful

tool for QA/QC in countries