Abstract

Climate change remains one of the most important challenges facing humanity. It affects every country and disrupts national economies and affects lives, costing people, communities and countries significantly today and in the future. Yet there is a significant inequity between countries’ emissions and impacts, meaning that those who contribute to climate change the least, suffer from it the most. People are experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, which include changing weather patterns, rising sea level, and more extreme weather events. The need for monitoring climate change is therefore more acute especially in light of the increased reporting requirements under the Enhanced Transparency Framework under the Paris Agreement and the climate-related Sustainable Development Goal indicators.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), in collaboration with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Expert Group on Environment Statistics (EGES), thus developed the Global Set of Climate Change Statistics and Indicators based on the request of the forty-seventh session of the United Nations Statistical Commission. The draft Global Set, based on the five IPCC areas and the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES), underwent pilot testing and an extensive Global Consultation, and was subsequently adopted by the fifty-third session of the 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).

Following the adoption of the Global Set, UNSD has intensified its collaboration with 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: (1) develop national climate change statistical programmes; (2) strengthen the capacity to monitor climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation actions; (3) increase involvement in climate change related data collection and submission of indicators to UNFCCC for supporting the implementation of the Paris Agreement; and (4) produce and disseminate climate change statistics via dedicated reports, websites and other means.

To support countries, UNSD in collaboration with UNFCCC and the EGES, developed Implementation Guidelines and the Climate Change Statistics and Indicators Self-Assessment Tool (CISAT). The CISAT, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/envstats/Climate%20Change/cisat.cshtml, will assist countries to complete an assessment of the needed and available resources as a first step towards developing a national programme on climate change statistics. The Implementation Guidelines, https://unstats.un.org/unsd/envstats/Climate%20Change/Implementation_Guidelines.pdf, 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 NSOs to better engage in the area of climate change. 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. Overall information on the Global Set is available here: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/envstats/climatechange.cshtml.