Comments on the objectives and process of the FDES revision

1. Comments on the objectives and process of the FDES revision Jean-Louis Weber SpecialAdviserEconomic Environnemental Accounting EuropeanEnvironment Agency jean-louis.weber@eea.europa.eu

2. Preliminary reflections GDP and Beyond, ICG Seminar on 'Evidence and decision making' Brussels, 10 May 2011 One paper is on properties that aggregates must meet to support policies fairly and efficiently . The 3 issues highlighted: • The relation between (statistical) evidence – policy (based on statistics), and the issue of the explicit and implicit norms contained by indicators • The capacity of composite/aggregated indicators to represent evidences in a fair way regarding policy making prerogatives • The risk of “extreme reduction”in particular when monetary valuation is used as a method for producing aggregates of the most general nature. “JRC input to the Interdepartmental Coordination Group (ICG)” by Andrea Saltelli and Angela Pereira

3. Preliminary reflections continued The conclusions by Saltelli and Pereira are that: • “policy has to bear the responsibility of the choice on which dimension to act upon, and no serious analysis can be done if the trade-off between dimensions does not remain explicit”, • that decision-making implies a “deliberative strand” into which numeric evidences contribute as “witnesses” (instead of decisions being submitted to “purely instrumental numbers”) and • as a consequence, statistical methods have to reflect their inherent “risk of reductionism with respect to the complexity involved”. These reflections should be in the background of our discussions on the future FDES

4. FDES is the framework for the development of environmental statistics • FDES is first of all a tool for statisticians to define their priorities and organize their work. • It has not to be in itself a comprehensive standalone analytical or reporting framework but it has to organize the supply of statistics to various analytical and reporting frameworks.

5. Analytical frameworks are important to guide statistician’s work • The SNA plays this role of guide for many aspects of economic and social statistics: classification of commodities and industries used for main surveys of consumption, activity or employment; commodities classification and consumption structure used to define and weight price indexes... • However, economic statistics don't have national accounts as unique customer or standard-provider. Sector applications are many and this diversity has been acknowledged by the SNA itself when “satellite accounts” have been introduced in 1993. In addition, national accounts themselves have had to adapt their framework to preexisting frameworks in particular for fiscal and international trade statistics.

6. In the environmental domain, several analytical and reporting frameworks are currently used or referred to • One of them is the SEEA currently revised as for its conventional 2003 coverage and completed with ecosystem capital accounts – hardly sketched in 2003. • A second one is the PSR/DPSIR framework broadly used for presenting State Of Environment Reports. • A third group of analytical frameworks is made of the various sets of indicators internationally (or regionally or nationally) endorsed: environmental indicators (various “baskets” or “dashboards”), resource efficiency indicators, Sustainable Development indicators (SDIs), for part MDG indicators... • Last but not least, international conventions, regional regulations and national laws include reporting obligations generally defined by narrow and specific but very precise frameworks.

7. Frameworks continued Remarks: • Because of the decision by the Statistical Commission to raise the SEEA up to a statistical standard level similar to SNA, economic-environmental accounts are expected to have an important role in streamlining the development of statistics. • However, even though the future full-fledged SEEA (covering ecosystem capital issues) can be foreseen as a guide for statistical development, it will not be the only guide, because of the multiple frameworks and “non-framed” needs to be supported by statistics.

8. From the standpoint of practical development of statistical services FDES should: • Start from the review the main existing frameworks (being done) and identify their data/statistics requirements: • Compliance data to be reported at the international, regional and national levels; assessment of guidelines; • Specific sets of indicators regularly published at the international, regional and national levels; suitability for SOE Reporting (relevance and completeness). • SOER: the range of issues to address to support with statistics the PSR/DPSIR storyline (probably need for additional explanations of DPSIR in relation to the ecosystem approach); • SEEA: satellite account of the SNA (environmental expenditures, material flows, input-output analysis, economic-natural assets accounting and valuation) and ecosystem capital accounts (physical ecosystem assets, degradation and depreciation, ecosystem services…). • Map correspondences and differences in data/statistics requirements for the 4 types of frameworks above mentioned

9. Continued… • Assess and recommend work-sharing arrangements and workflows between environment statistical units and: • primary producers of environmental data: environmental agencies including water agencies, academic institutions, space agencies, meteorological offices, mapping agencies in many cases, NGOs …; access to databases; • national accounts units: primary responsibility of NA in boundary issues such as economic natural assets, input-output analysis… methodological support for SEEA implementation; • sector statistics units, in particular for agriculture, forestry, fisheries and energy: annual dataflow, negotiation of specific characteristics needed for environmental assessments (e.g. sub-regional scale); • demographic and social statistics units: access to surveys results/ participation into surveys design (environmentally relevant questions), population censuses, household budget surveys, housing surveys, health surveys, urban databases; • more generally, ways and means for using of administrative sources, micro data...

10. Suite et fin • Review existing classifications (land cover, land use, services, species taxonomy, waste, toxic substance, specific environmental activities and sectors, typologies of rivers, relief…) – clarify differences and bridge or merge them when possible. (being done) • Propose guidance for priority settings according to policy demands and capacities.  MATRIX OR NOT MATRIX?

11. Just an illustration…