A three-day capacity-building workshop in Environmental Statistics, coordinated by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) brought together a wide cross of stakeholders from the public and private sectors for training in data collection. The workshop focused on environment and climate change statistics, and the production and compilation of data with indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals. Faustina Wiggins, Environmental Statistician with the Regional Statistics Programme at the CARICOM Secretariat was one of the facilitators.
“We are here to provide technical assistance to the CSO in order to encourage them to an Environmental and Climate Change Statistics Compendium. The first compendium that Saint Lucia produced was since 2001. So, we’re very interested in ensuring that they produce more up-to-date statistics to provide this information for policy and decision-makers. That is our ultimate aim to ensure that data is available on the environment and climate change conditions of Saint Lucia.”
The workshop provided training to participants in filling data gaps to enable the production of the environmental statistics compendium and also to provide additional data on environment and climate change statistics for CARICOM and other regional entities and publications.
“You can go to that report and get information on biodiversity, population, and households, forestry, agriculture, land use and you will be able to see how Saint Lucia has been doing in those aspects and be able to make decisions and see where we are.”
Suriname’s experience with environmental and climate change statistics was a central feature of the workshop. Anjali De Abreu-Kisoensingh, an Environmental Statistician with the General Bureau of Statistics in Suriname pointed to the over 20 years of experience Suriname has with consistently producing environmental and climate change statistics and the desire to share this experience with the rest of the region.
“And because of that experience we would like to share with Saint Lucia because I know they have the data but they just need the guidance. Share with them our experience so that they can publish this year. So we’re just trying to assist countries.”
She stressed the importance of data for effective, evidence-based decision-making and monitoring.
“As a country, we sign and ratify many conventions, many agreements. But to know if a country is doing well if we’re meeting our targets, we need to have data the same as the SDGs. You need to have data, you need to have a baseline. You need to have the data to say ‘OK we are on our way, we will be able to meet a certain target.’ And that’s the same with environment stats. If you want to have a good climate change policy you need to have a baseline first to know if all the projects you have been doing did have a good impact. So data is important for good policy and monitoring.”
Uranda Caesar, Statistician with the Central Statistical Office said this workshop is opportune as the CSO aims to publish the environmental and climate change statistics for Saint Lucia this year 2024.
“So we have brought together all different agencies both internal as well as the private sector. We have WASCO, LUCELEC, and some other private sector agencies. So we’re hoping that with all this information in one area that we can get the required data that we need to have this publication.”
The capacity-building workshop was conducted from February 13 – 15, 2024. It was funded by CARICOM under the 11th European Development Fund (EDF) Strengthening the Framework for CARICOM Integration and Cooperation Process Programme (SFCICPP).