Environmental Indicators and Statistics - MOE Perspective Shaikha Darwish Saad /Dr.Sayed Buchari Statistical Researcher Ministry of Environment

Content 5-Role of environmental indicators 4- Reporting obligations (local and international) 6-The needed of information for Ministry of Environment 7. Expectations of environmental statistics and the statistics authority? How environmental statistics support the MOE work 2-MOE Vision & Message 1- About Ministry of Environment 3-Stratigic goals for MOE

1- About Ministry of Environment The Ministry of Environment is striving to achieve several goals, most importantly, protecting the environment through inclusive and sustainable growth for future generation to achieve the vision of Reaching the vision would be through wildlife conservation, preparing and proposing laws, projects and suitable solutions for all environmental issues, implementing them by training Qatari nationals in implementation of environmental protocols, as well as environmental. awareness Civil and governmental organizations should coordinate all efforts; cooperate with regions and countries by ratification of environmental agreements and protocols for the purpose of protecting environments.

Our Vision: Preserve our environment and preserve and grow our resources, accessing to a sustainable environment. The MOE Message: MOE is a Government Foundation seeks to protect the country environment, development & sustainability of living & non- living natural resources, quality assurance, environmental health, through the creation of environmental awareness and propose environmental legislation, policies and national capacity-building and in accordance with the principles of community partnership and sustainable development, best practices and international standards to achieve excellence locally and leading the state of Qatar globally in the environmental field. 2- Ministry of Environment Vision & Message

3-Stratigic goals for MOE 1. Balance between the social and economic development needs and protecting the environment. 2. Preserving and protecting the environment, including air, land, water and biological diversity 3. Ensure the quality of environmental health and safety 4. Improve the institutional effectiveness and performance 5. Propose and develop policies and legislations to protect the environment 6. Enhance awareness and environmental culture 7. Support and activate the national, regional and international cooperation

1- International Reporting: …UNEP, FAO, UNSC, etc. 4- Reporting obligations (local and international) 2- Local Reporting: MOE has own procedures were information is reported backs to MOE by various stakeholders in a country. MOE has a process for regularly monitoring and inspecting facilities to check against any environmental violations.

We understand the importance of indicators is giving a legitimate accountability to our efforts in conserving and preserving our environment. Environmental Indicators not only help us benchmark our achievements but also provide an effective decision support tool and help decision making and policy framing at highest levels. Presently we are in the process of identifying our data that defines indicators. Example: we have starting with Marine and Coastal Environment. 5- Role of Environmental Indicators We start in Environmental Indicators early 2008, when Dr. Abdulkader organizes the 1st workshop on environmental indicators. We tried to build our Environmental Indicators based on the UN Guidelines.

The importance of accurate and timely environmental information is of increasing importance. 2- Converting data to information to be easier to understand. MOE is currently engaged in various projects that provide data on quality of Ambient air, Marine Environment, Ionic Radiation, Hydrogeology and hydrometeorology etc 6- The needed of information for Ministry of Environment Two major challenges: 1-Getting environmental data from different stakeholders onto one common platform & disseminating/sharing the data amongst us

Environmental data itself can't be seen in isolation.To see the effect of environmental data on a community we need to correlate this with social, economic data. 7- Expectations of environmental statistics and the statistics authority? How environmental statistics support the MOE work We have to have mutual understanding between two organizations in sharing data. We need to identify significant environment data & define a mechanism to find the data.

Other Agencies MOE QSA QSA should help us in deriving meaningful statistics out of our data to help decision support & decision making. QSA should help us in perceiving our data in light of other relevant data/statistics.