16 Aug 2016

Statisticians have been urged to strengthen coordination and collaboration amongst data producers to enhance opportunities for efficient and cost effective production of quality statistics.
Speaking during the stakeholder consultative workshop on Environment Statistics last week, the deputy statistician general Dr Burton Mguni stated that there was a greater need to increase collaboration across stakeholders on data provision, not only for cost-effectiveness but also to ensure that the data produced was coherent and met international standards.
Dr Mguni had said there had been a gap within statisticians of different departments saying for that reason production on statistical information on the environment had been a challenge because of lack of coordination amongst data producers leading to shortcomings in data interlinkages.
He said environment statistics was multi-disciplinary by nature and thus its source data was provided by a multiplicity of data producers in various sectors including government, private sectors, academia, non-governmental institutions and others.
He therefore stated that as the producer of official environmental statistics, Statistics Botswana relies on administrative environmental data from some of these various sources to compile, integrate and analyse the data so as to give coherent statistical information on various topics of interest.
Meanwhile, Dr Mguni mentioned that the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNICED) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2001 emphasised on the need for information on the state of the environment to support evidence-based formulation of policies, interventions and decision-making, with the view to ensuring that present needs were met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
He therefore called for quality environment statistics to be on the increase, particularly in view of the need to closely monitor and follow up on progress on development initiatives and programmes, including the 11^th National Development Plan, the upcoming Vision 2036, the SDGs and Africa’s Agenda 2063.
 Dr Mguni also stated that the production of environment statistics was guided by the United Nations Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (UNFDES).
The workshop, he said, aimed to familiarise environment data producers and users with the UNFDES, hence it was critical to comply with the framework so that the country produces at least a core set of environment statistics for international comparison.
He encouraged organisations to close data gaps, in order to improve the coverage and quality of the statistics.
In a separate interview, Ms Ditshupo Gaobotse of Environment Statistics Unit said another related challenge was the inadequacy of the coverage of statistics due to data gaps.
Ms Gaobotse encouraged data providers to submit data on time to produce accurate and timely environment statistics.
She mentioned that the workshop deliberations were to yield consensus on a basic set of environment statistics that the country should produce regularly as time series data so as to adequately monitor the state of the environment.
She also mentioned that the workshop was an important step towards collection of environment data for the production of Environment Statistics Report by March 2017.
She also said the workshop would help identify environment data gaps and the reasons for the gaps with a view to collaboratively come up with ways to close those gaps.  
Ms Gaobotse further explained the United Nations Framework for Development of Environment Statistics (UN FDES) that Statistics Botswana uses to produce environment statistics. ENDS