MEDSTAT II Environment sector is organizing a sub-regional training session on the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Water (SEEAW), jointly with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) which will be held in Amman, Jordan, during the period 10-13 March 2008.

 

Water scarcity is a major challenge facing of the Mashreq Mediterranean countries and the Arabian Peninsula. Countries of the region face major challenges in developing reliable, high quality, timely and comparable statistics on water and environment to strengthen water management and decision-making processes. In that context, the economic analysis of water use is very important for sustainable management of water resources. Water accounting provides a robust framework for producing and integrating hydrological and economic information on water for managers and decision-makers. The importance of integrated economic environment approach and in particular the development of water accounting has been confirmed by the MEDSTAT II Environment Task Force in June 2007 and by ESCWA Statistical Committee recommendation in 2004 and the adoption of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting for Water Resources (SEEAW) as an international statistical standard by the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2007.

ESCWA through the recently funded project "Strengthening National Capacities in Environment Statistics, Indicators and Accounts in support of progress toward achieving the internationally agreed development goals in the ESCWA and ECLAC[1] Regions", will assist to enhance the national capacities of Member States in environment statistics, indicator and accounts in order to integrate environmental concerns into economic development, thus supporting progress towards achieving environmental sustainability and related international agreed development goals member countries and therefore is implementing the activity  "Sub regional workshop on environment statistics, indicators and accounts for ESCWA".

The United Nations Statistics Division, having developed the SEEAW are currently developing addition materials to assist countries implementing the new international standard and are providing expertise to assist in the training. The SEEAW is available from the UNSD website (see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/envaccounting/SEEAWDraftManual.pdf ) and participants should print and read this prior to the training.

The cooperation between MEDSTAT II, ESCWA and UNSD enhances inter-regional synergies, maximizes cost effectiveness, and contributes to sub-regional, regional and interregional networking.