Environment Statistics

The Global Set was adopted at the fifty-third session of the United Nations Statistical Commission in March 2022 as the framework for climate change statistics and indicators to be used by countries when preparing their own sets of climate change statistics and indicators according to their individual concerns, priorities and resources. See decision 53/116, Climate Change Statistics, in the Final Report.

More information on the recent developments, planned activities and a brief description of the Global Set are included in the Report of the Secretary-General to the 53rd session of the Statistical Commission. This report is translated into the six UN languages and it contains Annex II listing all the indicators (also translated). All reports to and from the Statistical Commission sessions can be accessed from the first link below. National and regional examples of climate change publications can be accessed from the second link.

  UNSD activities on Climate Change Statistics:  Documents Conferences Side Events Workshops
  Climate Change Statistics Reports

Following the 2022 adoption of the Global Set, UNSD has continued to collaborate with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to ensure the consistent and strengthened implementation of the Global Set in countries. This will assist member states' national statistical offices (NSOs) in collaboration with national climate policy authorities to be able, inter alia, to:

• develop national climate change statistical programmes;
• strengthen the capacity to monitor climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation actions;
• increase involvement in climate change related data collection and submission of indicators to UNFCCC for supporting the implementation of the Paris Agreement; and
• produce and disseminate climate change statistics via dedicated reports, websites and other means.

To support countries, UNSD with the help of consultants developed Implementation Guidelines and the Climate Change Statistics and Indicators Self-Assessment Tool (CISAT), which were disseminated and discussed at length at the 9th meeting of the Expert Group on Environment Statistics (25-28 October 2022). Experts provided valuable advice to assist towards the finalization of these implementation support materials and their use by countries. The CISAT was piloted in a number of countries from the Caribbean, African and South American regions. The CISAT is essential since it will assist any country to complete an assessment of the needed and available resources as a first step towards developing a national programme on climate change statistics.

The Global Set in its most detailed form, including the metadata, is presented in the Climate Change Statistics and Indicators Self-Assessment Tool (CISAT) Part II. The full description of the Global Set and its metadata is also included in the Background document to the Report of the Secretary-General, entitled Global Set and metadata.

It is recommended that NSOs undertake this first step in close collaboration with the national climate policy authority and other stakeholders. The key questions to be considered as part of the self-assessment enquire about the relevance, data availability and methodological soundness of each indicator/statistic included in the Global Set. The self-assessment structure was drafted as similar as possible to the FDES-ESSAT to enable continuity and ease of transfer of the outputs between the two tools.

The guidelines for the implementation of the Global Set aim to help countries improve the monitoring of climate change, its impacts and response actions by better informing the national climate policy authorities about the benefits of official statistics and by guiding the NSO to better engage in the area of climate change. The Guidelines refer to the relevant frameworks, methods, guidelines, handbooks, etc. which will assist the closer engagement on both sides. The Guidelines specify the key steps needed to set up national processes to produce climate change statistics in response to national policies while striving to improve the comparability of data internationally. This will also promote the links between statistics and policy-making, and thus contribute to better monitor the evolution of climate change, as well as the way countries progress toward its mitigation and adapt to its adverse effects.