Environment Statistics

Under the tranche 10 of the Development Account, UNSD provided capacity development for strengthening environment and climate change statistics in The Gambia and Namibia by carrying out two national workshops (in 2018 and 2019). IN 2018, UNSD carried out a national mission for strengthening environment and climate change statistics in Equatorial Guinea and organized a regional workshop on environment statistics and information for sustainable development in the Arab region. In 2019, a regional workshop on environment statistics and climate change statistics was carried out for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region followed by a national workshop on environment statistics and climate change statistics in Grenada. During the Pilot Survey, UNSD offered advices to a number of developing countries in their effort to review the national statistical capacities needed to develop climate change statistics and indicators suggested in the draft Global Set.

In early 2020 the UNSD carried out its first inventory of capacity development events and activities (that took place in 2018 and 2019) led by 17 international and regional organizations. The inventory revealed that many of these activities and trainings are related to climate change.

Capacity development activities and needs on climate change statistics were presented and discussed on the last day of the seventh meeting of the EGES (17 November 2020). The Green Climate Fund (GCF) presented the scope of its work, including the Readiness and Preparatory Support Programme and the capacity development portfolio, and stated that, through the Readiness Programme, support for national adaptation planning, and capacity for data and information on climate impacts, vulnerability, adaptation and assessment would be strengthened and described how national statistical offices could benefit. Other initiatives were also mentioned, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)'s new project addressing 'Caribbean SIDS relevant climate change and disasters indicators for evidence-based policies'.

There is a growing need to share information about the numerous activities being undertaken world-wide, and subsequently, UNSD is planning to develop an inventory of related work on climate change statistics being carried out by partner organizations. Some of these activities are highlighted below.

Besides the technical work done on the Global Set, as requested by the forty-ninth session of the Statistical Commission in 2018, UNSD has been working closely with the UNFCCC secretariat to strengthen the link between statistics and policy by, inter alia, holding joint side events at the Statistical Commission meetings, the participation of the UNFCCC secretariat in the EGES, the participation of UNSD in a side event at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development in 2019, and the participation of the UNFCCC secretariat in regional and subregional workshops on environment statistics and climate change statistics, such as those organized by UNSD for the Arab region in 2018 and for the CARICOM region in 2019.

The UNFCCC secretariat has organized three virtual meetings on "Building the Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF)" to discuss the diversity of initiatives underway and the common goals to support countries under both the current Measurement, Reporting and Verification system and in the transition to the ETF. During the discussions, presentations were delivered by, inter alia, the UNFCCC secretariat, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), IPCC and UNSD. In addition to the UNFCCC secretariat's very strong appreciation for UNSD's involvement in the area of climate change statistics to support the ETF and eventually the Global Stocktake, FAO and IPCC also stressed the importance of these statistics and proposed further bilateral consultations with UNSD. Capacity development in climate change monitoring and reporting was also an important subject of discussion and proposals were made among the agencies on strengthening coordination and collaboration in service delivery to countries.

Several other international and regional institutions have been publishing climate change statistics and indicators including FAO through its Corporate Database for Substantive Statistical Data, on emissions from the agricultural sector, temperature change, estimates of the area of organic soils drained for agriculture and associated GHG emissions (1990-2019), and estimates of carbon emissions and removals by forests (1990-2020). Following the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA)'s publication of its report on 'Climate Change-Related Statistics in the Arab Region' in 2017, the CARICOM Secretariat recently published its 'Climate Change Statistics Report' which contains quantitative data, graphs and qualitative data that aims to present the situation on climate change in the region including latest data up to 2020. Apart from ECE and ESCWA, other regional commissions are also working on climate change and disasters monitoring indicators for their respective regions.

A number of national activities demonstrating the increased capacities and involvement of NSOs in climate change statistics that have been communicated to UNSD follow:
a) the expansion of existing environment statistics units or divisions in NSOs to also cover climate statistics, and in Ireland and Cameroon, also including both environment and climate in the actual name of the unit or division;
b) Grenada's Central Statistical Office setting up an Inter-agency Committee for Environment and Climate Change Statistics;
c) Slovenia's Statistical Office holding a data providers and data users event called 'Statistical Day', which was dedicated to climate change data in 2020;
d) the National Bureau of Statistics in Tanzania producing its first National Climate Change Statistics Report, 2019; and
e) the Statistical Institute of Jamaica publishing its 'Climate Change Statistics' report in 2016.