Conference on Climate Change, Development and Official Statistics Seoul, 11-12 December 2008

1. Conference on Climate Change, Development and Official Statistics Seoul, 11-12 December 2008 Climate Change and Indicators of Sustainable Development Matthias Bruckner Division for Sustainable Development Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations

2. Outline • What are indicators of sustainable development? • Why are indicators of sustainable development useful for measuring climate change impacts and responses? • Which indicators are used by countries? • Where are the main challenges for developing climate change indicators of sustainable development?

3. UN DESA – Division for Sustainable Development • Mission Statement: To provide leadership and to be an authoritative source of expertise within the United Nations system on sustainable development • DSD serves as the Secretariat of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) • CSD: • Functional Commission of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) • Attended by non-CSD member states, UN system, NGOs and IGOs • Includes high-level segment with 60-70 ministers in attendance • DSD conducts normative work, analytical work and technical cooperation

4. Sustainable Development • “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Brundtland Commission) • Sustainable development integrates economic development, social development and environmental protection. • Sustainable development has three overarching objectives and essential requirements: • Poverty reduction; • Changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption; • Protecting and managing the natural resource base of economic and social development.

5. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Indicators of sustainable development can have multiple functions: • Simplifying, clarifying and making aggregated information and scientific knowledge available to policy-makers • Measuring progress towards sustainable development goals • Identifying critical issues for sustainable development • Communicating the concept of sustainable development to policy-makers and the public

6. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Indicators of sustainable development often integrate economic, social and environmental statistics, e.g. • Resource efficiency indicators integrate economic and environmental statistics; • Gender employment indicators integrate economic and social statistics; • Air pollution indicator integrate social and environmental statistics; • Indicator on sustainable resource management integrate all three dimensions, but are often not fully developed.

7. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Indicators of sustainable development can use different frameworks. • Frameworks determine what to measure and why • Policy-oriented frameworks • Guaranteed policy relevance, flexible, buy-in form stakeholders • Prone to change with change in government, sometimes theoretically weak • Theory-based frameworks • More stable across time, more commonalities across countries, less subject to political change • Need to agree on theory, validity and relevance of theories varies across time and space, less buy-in from stakeholders, policy relevance can be low • Extended capital theory advocated by some (see e.g. Joint ECE/OECD/Eurostat Working Group on Statistics for Sustainable Development) • Other frameworks: Indices (theory-based or theory-free), Pressure-state-response frameworks

8. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Many countries across the world utilize indicators of sustainable development, especially for • Monitoring progress of their national sustainable development strategies; • Assessing state of sustainable development. • UN DESA publishes a set of Indicators of Sustainable Development as reference for countries to develop national indicators • Mandated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in 1995; • Third edition released in late 2007.

9. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Detailed methodology sheets for each indicator available online. • Methodology sheets will be updated regularly. • http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/isd.htm

10. Indicators of Sustainable Development • Role of official statistics in national indicator sets • Provision of high-quality data (data collection and integration) • Common types and sources of data needed • National accounts • Censuses • Household and other surveys • Administrative records • Estimations based on agreed standards; • Provision of statistical methodologies and standards; • In some countries, official statistics have a lead role in analysing and reporting of indicators

11. Benefits of indicators of sustainable development for climate change • Climate change is a sustainable development issue, not just an environmental concern • Climate change threatens to erase progress made in achieving sustainable development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals. • Greenhouse gas emissions depend on economic and technological pathways. • Current emissions impact on the living conditions of future generations. • Poor and vulnerable countries are expected to face the greatest burden of climate change, while having contributed the least to the problem. • Indicators of sustainable development can be informative for climate change.

12. Benefits of indicators of sustainable development for climate change • Existing sustainable development indicator sets are a useful point of departure for the derivation of climate change indicators. • Recognizes the important linkages between climate change and other sustainable development issues, e.g. • Reducing emissions from combustion of (imported) fossil fuels can increase energy security. • Improved disaster risk management helps to address not only climate related events (droughts, floods,…), but also non-climate related ones (earthquakes, volcanoes) • Preserving forests to maintain natural capital and to sustain livelihoods also increases carbon absorption.

13. Benefits of indicators of sustainable development for climate change • Linking climate change indicators to sustainable development indicators increases coherence among indicator sets. • This avoids risk of sending ‘mixed’ messages. • Coherence can further be increased by incorporating existing issue-specific sets of sustainable development indicators, for example • Energy Indicators of Sustainable Development • Biodiversity Indicators. • Disaggregating general indicators of sustainable development may make them climate change relevant. • It also helps to avoid duplication of efforts. • It may reduce reporting burden for agencies.

14. Benefits of indicators of sustainable development for climate change • While using national sets of indicators of sustainable development as basis for climate change indicators, other processes should be integrated • International processes under the UNFCCC • Negotiations related to ‘measurable, reportable and verifiable’ commitments and actions on mitigation, financing, technology and capacity-building • Performance indicators on technology transfer • Reduced emissions form deforestation and forest degradation • National climate strategies and action plans • Progress on System of Environmental-Economic Accounting • Climate change-related work on CSD indicators • Meeting held in New York in October 2008, see http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/15Oct_2008/egm.htm

15. Indicators used at the national level • Many indicators used by countries to monitor their national sustainable development strategies (NSDS) relate to climate change. • Climate change and development are not fundamentally new issues. • There are different possibilities to determine which indicators of sustainable development are climate change related. • Indicators on issues that the strategy explicitly identify as being linked to climate change (‘Revealed preference’). • Indicators on issues that other countries identified as climate change relevant in their strategies. • Indicators on issues that experts identified as climate change related, for example in the IPCC reports. • Following examples are based on an on-going study by UN DESA • The study uses indicator sets of 9 countries • Number of indicators varies across countries, so number of indicator sis no indication of emphasis on climate change in NSDS

16. Indicators used at the national levelAustralia – Climate change mitigation

17. Indicators used at the national levelAustralia – Climate change adaptation

18. Indicators used at the national levelIndia – Climate change mitigation

19. Indicators used at the national levelIndia – Climate change adaptation

20. Indicators used at the national levelRepublic of Korea – Climate change mitigation I

21. Indicators used at the national levelRepublic of Korea – Climate change mitigation II

22. Indicators used at the national levelRepublic of Korea – Climate change adaptation

23. Indicators used at the national levelUnited Kingdom – Climate change mitigation I

24. Indicators used at the national levelUnited Kingdom – Climate change mitigation II

25. Indicators used at the national levelUnited Kingdom – Climate change mitigation III

26. Indicators used at the national levelUnited Kingdom – Climate change adaptation

27. Indicators used at the national levelOther countries – Climate change mitigation

28. Indicators used at the national levelOther countries – Climate change adaptation

29. Indicators used at the national levelOther countries – Climate change financing

30. Main challenges • Defining the scope of climate change indicators of sustainable development • Indicators expressing significant linkages should probably be included. • To remain focused, indicators expressing indirect linkages could be excluded. • Additional specific climate change indicators may be useful • E.g. climate indicators, CO2 intensity of fuels, CO2 emissions from policy relevant sources such as cars • Definitions of climate change adaptation are often vague. • People and economies adapt to a multiple factors, climate change being one of them. • If “development is the best form of adaptation”, are all development indicators climate change related?

31. Main challenges • Statistical classifications and methodologies for indicators in some important domains remain incomplete • Land cover, land use and land degradation. • Key area for both mitigation and adaptation • Ecosystem services • Spatial classifications for capturing spatially differentiated climate change impacts • Technology transfer • Lack of common definitions of climate change related technologies • Technology can be transferred through many modes (trade in goods, trade in services, inward foreign direct investment, outward foreign direct investment) • Transfer can be at commercial or at preferential terms.

32. Main challenges • Time lag between climate change measures and climate change impact • Measures on climate change mitigation and adaptation are in response to future climate changes. • Climate change impacts are uncertain • Extreme events can be devastating, but cannot be ignored (‘Fat-tailed’ distribution) • Demand for indicators to a large extent determined by outcome of current climate change negotiations. • Details of outcome currently unknown.

33. Thank You Contact: Matthias Bruckner Division for Sustainable Development Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations email: brucknerm@un.org http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/index.html