The economic development in the ESCWA region is accompanied by an overexploitation of resources causing adverse impacts on the environment, particularly deteriorating air and water quality, diminishing water resources, land degradation and desertification, and biodiversity loss, all of which affect the sustainability and quality of life. In order to address such problems and provide solutions, ESCWA member countries need to strengthen environmental legislation and implement regulations and action plans for monitoring the state of environment and reach the regional and international environmental standards. To reach that goal, ESCWA has been assisting member countries in developing a programme of environment statistics aimed at compiling and disseminating timely, reliable, relevant and comparable environment data and building a sound database related to various aspects of the environment for use by Government officials, stakeholders and the public. This publication provides a review of the status of the environment in the ESCWA region. It includes comprehensive data on freshwater resources and management, integrated environmental and economic accounting, waste management, energy consumption, air pollution and environmental sustainability. The collection of information relied on the 2008 environment statistics on water and waste compiled by the United Nations Statistics Division, and was complemented by statistics from national, regional and international publications and databases, with priority given to official national sources.