The Federal Government has inaugurated two committees to collect and collate environmental statistics across Nigeria.
The committees are the National Steering Committee and the National Technical Committee for Environmental Statistics.
The committees, which were inaugurated by the Minister of Environment, Laurentia Mallam, in Abuja, would ensure a healthier management of the environment by providing credible and reliable data.
Mallam, in a statement from the Federal Ministry of Environment, said the inauguration became necessary following the release of the revised Framework for the Development of Environmental Statistics (FDES) by the global statistical commission for member-countries of the United Nations.
She said: “Based on the UN revised FDES, the Federal Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), organised a two-day national conference in 2013.
“At the conference, the MDAs responsible for the generation of relevant statistics for the list of indicators in the FDES were indentified and memberships to the committees were agreed upon. The preliminary effort to bring the nation on board on environmental statistics was, therefore, formed.”
The minister said the committee would ensure that environmental statistics at national, regional and global levels were established, adding that this would result in the production of environmental and sustainable development indicators.
Mallam said the terms of reference of the National Steering Committee would include, among other things, to map out strategies for implementation of the UN revised FDES, garner political support, advocacy, legislative requirements and financial assistance.
“Similarly, the terms of reference of the National Technical Committee will include national self assessment on capacity for the development of environmental statistics and methodology to be adopted for the development,” she added.
A representative of the UNDP, Odele Muyiwa, explained that statistical information was essential for understanding the complex and rapidly changing world.
“We cannot, therefore, discuss the issue of environment if we disregard the place of environmental statistics in solving our ever increasing environmental problems,” he said.
