Seychelles hosts workshop on environment statistics |22 February 2017
Seychelles is hosting a workshop aimed at introducing key stakeholders to a multi-purpose conceptual and statistical framework which provides a better organised structure for data collection and environment statistics at a national level.
Taking place at Care House, Freedom Square, the workshop on environment statistics in support of the implementation of the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES 2013) has been organised by the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change (MEECC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in collaboration with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD).
The FDES 2013, endorsed by the UNSD, is a framework used for strengthening environment statistics programmes in various countries.
It includes the basic and core sets of environment statistics and is recognised as a useful tool to adequately respond to the increasing demand for environmental information in the follow-up to Rio+20 and the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
The training workshop, which officially opened on Monday, is being facilitated by Comesa representatives Happy Bota, data analyst from the statistics unit and Anand Sookun, environmental statistics consultant.
It will cover six components which collectively bring data from various environmental issues and subjects and they are; environmental conditions and quality; environment resources and their use; residual, extreme events and disasters; human settlements and environmental health; and lastly, environment protection, management and engagement.
In his opening remarks principal secretary (PS) for energy and climate change Wills Agricole said this workshop aims to present the key environmental data in Seychelles with FDES 2013 through its support tool, the Environment Statistics Self-Assessment Tool (ESSAT).
“The ESSAT can assist Seychelles in identifying the different institutions producing environmental statistics, […] developing its environment statistics programmes, collecting its own data on the environment, assessing the state of environment statistics and the need for its development at the national level while being consistent with the scope of the FDES 2013. It will also help to identify quantitative and qualitative data gaps,” he said.
PS Agricole said as Seychelles is party to a vast array of international environment related conventions, we have many obligations where timely and accurate reporting is concerned, hence, there is a necessity to generate annual credible data so that the various states of our terrestrial and marine environments are measured, assessed and compared based on agreed standards to those of other countries.
“Although significant progress has been made where data management is concerned in Seychelles, a lot of data and information are still lacking, scattered in various institutions, sometimes inaccurate and not harmonised,” he said.
Mr Sookun said he hopes the outcome of this workshop is to have annual published reports which will be available to everyone in the country and also to the international organistations.
“We would like to have Seychelles produce and publish environment statistics regularly which will help in many issues like sustainable development, protection of the environment and to help the people,” he said.
Present at this workshop are representatives of the Division of Risk and Disaster Management (DRDM), PetroSeychelles, Seychelles Fishing Authority (SFA), Seychelles Energy Commission (Sec), Seychelles Agricultural Agency (SAA), Public Health Service (PHS), Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF), Public Utilities Corporation (PUC), Sustainability for Seychelles (S4S), Seychelles Coast Guard (SCG), NBS and MEECC, among others.