Canada’s Census of Environment: An Update

In 2021, the Government of Canada awarded Statistics Canada (StatCan) with funding to develop the Census of Environment (CoE), which links data on ecosystems with socio-economic information to analyze the connections between ecosystems, the economy and human well-being. The new programme is conducted in partnership with Environment and Climate Change Canada, and in collaboration with several key federal departments.  

The CoE expands upon StatCan’s ongoing environmental accounts and statistics programme based upon the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). It allows for the development of consistent and ongoing data on ecosystem assets, following the SEEA Ecosystem Accounting (SEEA EA) framework.   

In the first three years of the programme, StatCan has worked on setting out the path for the CoE as well as researching, integrating, and producing data. The vision for this project involves providing comprehensive information on Canada’s ecosystems, to understand their extent, condition and the values and benefits of nature to society.    

To achieve this goal, significant efforts have been expended to develop infrastructure to support data and accounts development. This includes work on parameters for a grid system for the ecosystem register and determining how best to store and process ecosystem data. The CoE is engaged in creating a suite of land, water, and ecosystem accounts, integrating the bio-physical environmental data with the vast array of socio-economic information available in StatCan and elsewhere. A focus of this work includes data integration to delineate ecosystem assets.  

Products released to date include ocean and coastal accounts, with data available on ecosystem extent, protected areas and salt marsh condition and services. In addition, the team has produced data for the agroecosystem extent and condition accounts and urban extent and condition accounts. Progress has also been made on socio-economic linkages with releases on resource-based communities, coastal populations and population by ecological geographies. Data on ecosystem provisioning services and updates to the historic water resources time series round out the program’s recent releases. 

A key deliverable for the CoE was the creation of a portal to disseminate the programme’s data products and tools. This portal was released in Spring 2024 and offers users easy access to the data and resources that the CoE produces. It also includes the CoE Geospatial Explorer that allows users to view recent CoE data as a thematic map. This portal will be regularly updated as the program develops, and as new products are released. 

Biodiversity data is in demand for policy makers and the CoE will provide data for broader policy initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals indicators and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF).  For example, the CoE is responsible for developing data to support three headline indicators under the GBF (extent of natural ecosystems (A2), ecosystem services (B1), and public access to urban green and blue spaces (12.1)).  

Article contributed by Jennie Wang, Statistics Canada