A panel on environmental data was organized at the 6th meeting of the Task Force on Access to Information under auspices of the UNECE Aarhus Convention. The purpose was to inform country delegates of the available environmental information and the support that was available to them for gathering and understanding this information. Presentations focused on:
- Environmental indicator data under the Sustainable Development Goals. Countries are required to begin collecting these data to support tracking of performance against the SDGs. Of the 242 indicators, 93 of them are environment related. At the moment, 68% of these environmental indicators do not have sufficient data or reporting to move beyond Tier III status.
- Significant improvements in environmental data, especially geospatial and SDG indicator data have allowed the sixth Global Environment Outlook to identify that issue by issue policy making will not be sufficient to achieve the ambitious environmental goals under the SDGs, Paris Agreement, Aichi targets on biodiversity, the chemicals target under the SAICM process or other internationally agreed environmental goals. What is needed is an approach that targets the broad systems of energy, food and waste, affecting transformational change in these systems so that the environmental problems are not created in the first place.
- The Group on Earth Observations has drammatically expanded the available geospatial information for environmental analysis. The information is now freely available and meant to support country efforts in tracking progress on environmental issues.
- The training arm of the United Nations, UNITAR, is expanding its training courses on SDG reporting and the tracking of other environmental data. This service is available to countries to help them meet their SDG reporting obligations.
