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ENVIRONMENT STATISTICS

OBJECTIVES

The Environment Statistics Program contributes to meeting the demand for comprehensive and coordinated information about Australia’s environment, focusing on key themes such as water, energy and land management. The complex inter-relationships between the environment, society and the economy require integrated information, which is a key focus of the program.

The program actively engages with partners to understand information needs and coordinate the development of statistics from the wide range of data available in this field.

Use of environment statistics is varied and includes the formulation of policies, economic analysis, research, forecasting and meeting international reporting obligations. Clients of the program include:

• Australian Government departments of Environment; Agriculture; Industry; Innovation, and the Treasury
• Australian Government agencies such as the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences; the Murray Darling Basin Authority; the Bureau of Meteorology; and Geoscience Australia
• state and territory government departments with environment or energy responsibilities
• academic and research organisations, environmental groups, businesses and individuals.

• continued collaboration for development of the remaining volumes of the United Nations’ System of Environmental Economic Accounts (SEEA), which brings environmental and economic information together within a common framework
• production of annual environmental economic accounts according to the SEEA framework: Australian Environmental-Economic Accounts (cat. no. 4655.0), Energy Account, Australia (cat. no. 4604.0); Water Account, Australia (cat. no. 4610.0); Land Account: Land Account: Great Barrier Reef Region, Experimental Estimates (cat. no. 4609.0.55.001); Land Account: Victoria, Experimental Estimates (cat. no. 4609.0.55.002); and Land Account: Queensland, Experimental Estimates (cat. no. 4609.0.55.003).

• improve the quality and depth of detail of existing water and energy accounts - ongoing
• work with key stakeholders to demonstrate applications of SEEA and promote its use as a framework for integration of socio-economic and environmental information to inform policy development and decision making - ongoing
• investigate further expansion of the environmental accounting program that could encompass regular ecosystems, environmental expenditure, environmental goods and services and environment industry accounts - ongoing
• collaborate with other government agencies around environmental information initiatives such as; the National Plan for Environmental Information, the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting system, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Outlook Report, and the National Waste Report - ongoing
• provide statistical support and training to Asia and the Pacific region on the implementation of the SEEA - ongoing.