International frameworks for environmental statistics and their application to climate change related statistics

The last decades witnessed increasing demand of statistics and accounts in order to adequately describe environmental issues. The information required cover a wide range of interlinked statistical domains. For Climate Change (CC), linkages of environmental statistics with economic and social ones are particularly strong. Referenced frameworks - among the several national and international initiatives responding to the growing demand - have the advantage of structuring the overwhelming amount of information produced. The aim of this work is to present how two main international frameworks can be used for providing environmental statistical information, especially on CC. The first framework, the UNSD-FDES 2013 and its methodological 2014-2016 developments, is based on a multi-purpose conceptual and statistical approach, defining standardized concepts, definitions and methodologies. The second is the System of Environmental Economic Accounting 2012 - Central Framework (SEEA-CF) providing the first international statistical standard for environmental-economic accounting. In the UN-ECE context, FDES and SEEA are both primary sources in the work to define an internationally comparable set of key CC related statistics and indicators. A main objective of the UN-ECE Groups is to enhance the role of NSOs in the development of statistics on CC related phenomena. Istat provides a significant contribution to these frameworks development in building and implementing harmonized methods and definitions. The challenge is to adequately transform data into environmental statistics, relevant to official statistics production, ensuring a coherent system at national and international level, suitable to meet the increasing information demand on environment and especially on Climate Change.