Second  National Workshop on Environment Statistics

 

The Second  Workshop on Environment Statistics was organized at Hyderabad during 6-7 April 2000 in collaboration with directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Andhra Pradesh. 6 technical sessions were organized in the workshop on following topics:-

i)                    Review of work done by Central Statistical Organisation

ii)                   Environmental information data base as proposed by UNEP-AP;

iii)                 Data on Ecology and Bio-diversity;

iv)                 Data on Global Warming and Climate Change;

v)                  Data on Air and Water Pollution; and

vi)                 Natural Resource Acount;

        Session-wise recommendations of these workshops are given at the end of the proceedings published by Central Statistical Organisation. The publication can be obtained from Environment Unit, CSO on request. Some of the major recommendations of this workshop ara as under:-

a.       There is a need for development of frame according to which environmenta data could be collected.  This exercise would help in optimum utilization of the scarce resource for collecting only the relevant data which could be used for policy formulations

b.      CSO itself can identify the data gaps and seek the opinion of the Experts.  A need was felt for uniformity in the selection of cities and states for presentation of data on ambient air quality for the compendium.

c.       The emphasis was laid on identification of important priority areas,  standardization of codes and formats.  It was felt that non-comparability of environmental statistics was a serious problem and some serious attempts were required to be made in this area.

d.      Yet another suggestion was made for establishing linkages with the Data included in the State of Environmental Reports (SOER) and that presented in the Compendium.

e.       Information data base should be available for everybody on every level.  Attempts must be made to have a web-site for CSO as has been done by Ministry of Environment and Forests.

f.        Hindranes in access of data at different levels should be removed.  Data must be made available at district level with sources.

g.       Information could be given with limitations and clarifications even informally.  A mention of range and frequency of data, as this has as much importance as the data itself, should be made.

h.       Canvassing of pollution schedule in the ASI schedule should be made mandatory.  As far as Green GDP, is concerned not only organized sector but informal sector should also be taken into account.

i.         It was agreed that 100% pollution abatement was impossible to be achieved and therefore some societal norms for accepted cut down levels had to be maintained.