Environment Statistics

The Development Account project "Strengthening Capacity in the Compilation of Statistics and Indicators for Conference Follow-up in the CARICOM Region" was jointly carried out by UNSD and the CARICOM Secretariat between 2000 and 2003 and covered the areas of social/gender and environment statistics, with a supporting component of information technology.

Following a preparatory assessment phase, the environment statistics component of the project was launched at the Workshop on Environment Statistics held in Belize in 2000 where participants agreed upon a list of environment statistics and indicators to be collected jointly by UNSD and CARICOM and to be presented in a regional publication. Subsequently, Member States engaged in compiling data, some supported by intra-regional study tours and ad hoc consultancy and advisory services. Several regional and international organizations were consulted and contributed data or text to the chapters. An Expert Group Meeting to review the draft publication was held in 2001.

An Advisory Group comprising seven directors of national statistical offices, representatives of the CARICOM Secretariat and UNSD, was established to ensure sustainability in the areas of social/gender and environment statistics in the region. As part of the project UNSD supported three meetings of the Advisory Group.

As a major output of the project, the publication "The CARICOM Environment in Figures 2002" presents the major environmental issues through textual summaries, tables, charts and graphs together with detailed comments on the data.

Several Member States in the region have organized workshops or seminars at the national level in environment statistics and have increased inter-agency collaboration since the inception of the project. The project has provided stimulus and support to the existing initiatives of Belize and Jamaica in environment statistics. Several environment statistics compendia have been published in Belize since 1999 and in Jamaica since 2002. Grenada, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Suriname published their first environment statistics compendia during the course of the project and several of these countries have continued to publish compendia on a regular basis. In addition, other countries such as Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago have produced similar publications. Since the completion of the project UNSD has continued to provide technical support at national workshops and substantive review of draft compendia and other initiatives in some countries in the region.

CARICOM has continued to promote environment statistics in the region and has organized a number of regional workshops since the end of the project in which UNSD has usually participated and provided technical support.

CARICOM has produced further regional publications since the first one in 2002 mentioned above. These publications, "The CARICOM Environment in Figures", have been based on data submitted by Member States and Associate Members, from UNSD and from other regional and national organisations. The 2014 publication is the fourth in this series that has been produced in environment statistics and contains data for the period 2009 to 2013/2014 where these are available. The first publication contained data up to the period 2002, the second publication contained data from approximately 1998 to 2004, and the third publication contained data from 2005 to 2009. All publications are available at: http://www.caricomstats.org/Environpubs.htm

In 2012, CARICOM published Environment Statistics metadata available at: http://www.caricomstats.org/helpdesk/documentarycentre/Dom3/EnvStatsMetadata.pdf

Further information can be found on the CARICOM Regional Statistics Programme website: (http://www.caricomstats.org/) and in most UNSD ENVSTATS newsletters since Issue 16 (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/environment/newsletters.htm).