Apr
23
It is all about climate change statistics
April 23, 2008 | | Leave a Comment
By Eva Chang (12)
Climate Change is a statistical issue. Debates over the existence of climate change revolve around the show of statistical proof of changes and variances in the earth’s temperature over a given period. Current statistical measures create two problems. One is the lack of a standard statistical measure with widespread recognition in order to support widely accepted statistical data and the other is the lack of a common standard of interpreting statistical data. The development of statistical measures and standards of interpretation would finally settle the debate over whether there is climate change and whether climate change is a problem. This is necessary to shift efforts towards actions.
The Conference on Climate Change and Official Statistics happened in Oslo, Norway on 14 to 16 April 2008 to develop a sound action agenda by the international official statistics community to play its role of providing statistical data on climate change to support policymaking. The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) together with the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat), World Bank, and Statistics Norway convened the participants of the conference, including the representatives of the official statistical offices of both developed and developing countries. Federal State Statistics Service of Russia, Statistics Canada, and Australian Bureau of Statistics are participants from developed countries and Hungarian Central Statistics Office, National Statistical Coordination Board of the Philippines, and the Ministry of Statistics of India represented the developing countries.
The overall issue addressed by the conference is the dominating ad hoc treatment of the official statistics community of climate change. Some official statistics departments continuously provide statistical data to national decision makers. Most of the official statistics departments created only engage in analytical activities by focusing only on one aspect of climate change or provide data on a limited area of climate change as requested by national governments. Other states have not even created or delegated statistical divisions to monitor climate change efforts. A more specific issue is clarifying the role of official statistics in supporting the goals of adaptation and mitigation discussed in the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007. Another specific issue is the development of standards and frameworks for official statistics on climate change. This is necessary to support and tie-up the individual actions of states in line with their commitments to contribute efforts in addressing climate change.
While there is common agreement that official statistics play an important role in decisions and policies pertaining to adaptation and mitigation aspects of climate change efforts, the development of statistical standards and frameworks involves difficulties especially since the official statistics community operate on different frameworks based on their contextual experiences of climate change. There is need to develop a uniform but encompassing framework for official climate change statistics. A greater difficulty is the lack of official statistics departments in many states that is necessary in monitoring adaptation and monitoring efforts in addressing the climate change problem and its impact.Without statistics, states would never know the effectiveness of efforts in addressing cimate change.
