Climate Change Statistics: European Experience and National Assessment

Abstract

Climate change is one of the most serious threats to the society, economy and environment in the whole world and Ukraine in particular. The central objective for the environmental statistics today is to perform the sound statistical assessment, to develop or improve new or existing approaches to building up the system for accounting of the indicators measuring climate change and adaptation to it. The improvement or development of existing or new methodologies and methods for the statistical accounting and assessment of climate change indicators is the only way for the production of information in a sound and comprehensive manner. It is argued that the statistical analysis allows deepening the grasp into the operation of a complex and dynamic phenomena as climate change, elaborate actions to reduce its adverse environmental effect, and eliminate adverse consequences of climate change for our planet.  It is found that the official statistics have been put the ever stronger focus on issues of environmental performance and climate change by concentrating on the development and improvement of methodologies and procedures for compilation of environmental accounts that are used for economic measurements of natural resources, energy, waste, water resources, air emissions, spending for environmental protection. It is stressed the United Nations Statistical Commission has adopted, at global level, the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) designed to provide important support to the development of statistics related with climate change by intensifying the effort in several dimensions of the complex economic and environmental accounting. The industry coverage of the climate change statistics is defined, with a detailed description of various approaches to the environmental accounting in which indicators of climate change are involved. The significance of the environmental-economic accounting (and the account of air emission of dangerous substances in particular) as the central source of data on greenhouse gas emissions in Ukraine is substantiated. In spite of many functions in the measurement of climate change, assigned to the national statistics system, the existing official statistics does not always employ its capacities for the assessment of climate change. By considering the statistics on climate change as a tool with impact on decision-making in this field, the authors outlined the areas of improvements in the accounting of climate and climate change.