Meeting Title: Capacity Building Workshop on Satellite Accounts of the Environment in Malawi

Location: Lilongwe, Malawi

Date: 17^th – 19^th December 2018

Partners: UNECA

SDG Indicators: 6.3.2, 6.6.1, 14.4.1, 15.1.1, 15.2.1, 15.3.1

Type: Physical Accounts of Water, Land and Forests

Brief description

Malawi has embarked on a process of developing satellite environmental accounts that is in line with the sustainable development policy. As part of this environmental assessment and providing a training on environment statistics, Malawi must benefit from technical assistance from the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Environment Programme. The technical committee benefited from the support of experts from both institutions in the framework of a capacity building workshop from 17th December to 19th December 2018.

The objective of the workshop was to build the capacity of Technical Committee members in the development of environmental satellite accounts. The workshop specifically focused on the water, land, and forests accounts and the capacity building for these accounts with an overview on component 2 of the Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics (FDES). This workshop also introduced the participants to data modeling and implementing the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) for national data reporting.

Specifically, the workshop aimed at:

• Better equip the Technical Committee in the development of physical accounts (forests and timber resources, land management, water resources);
• better equip the Technical Committee in the preparation of environmental goods and services accounts;
• finalize the filling of the self-assessment tool for environmental statistics as recommended by the FDES.

Key findings and conclusions from the workshop included:

• There is a strong need for coordination and collaboration among the institutions responsible for collecting environment statistics
• ESSAT to form a basis of data structure available and missing within the institutions that collects environment statistics
• Follow up workshop to analyze the data collected through ESSAT.
• Need a standalone workshop on SDMX tool with targeted participants and develop if for its use in Malawi through NSO

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