Looking Forward to the 56th United Nations Statistical Commission
The 56th Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) will take place in New York, from 4 to 7 March 2025. As every year, the UNSC will discuss the report on environmental-economic accounts by the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental Economic Accounting (UNCEEA).
Following the endorsement of the update of the SEEA Central Framework by the UNSC at its 55th session in 2024, the discussion this year will focus on the update process and the list of issues for the update of the SEEA Central Framework. The UNCEEA, through its Technical Committee on the SEEA CF, finalized the list of issues for the update of the SEEA Central Framework based on discussions within its members and the feedback from the global consultation that took place in 2024.
The report will also present an update to the Mandate and Governance of the UNCEEA for endorsement by the UNSC. The proposed updates are intended to more closely reflect the current work programme, working methods and priorities of the Committee and also improve efficiency and communication.
The UNSC will also review progress in the work programme on environmental economic accounts by the Committee’s four working groups (i.e. Coordination and Communication (Area A), Methodological development for normative standards (Area B), Development of databases (Areac C) and Implementation and statistical capacity-building (Area D)), by the London Group on Environmental Accounting and also by other groups of experts as relevant. The Committee continued to mainstream the SEEA into priority areas such as climate change, biodiversity and sustainable tourism and has made great progress in advancing the discussion on the development of global databases for the priority areas identified by the Committee in 2016 and coordinating capacity building activities to support countries in the implementation of the SEEA.
The report of the Committee to the UNSC will be available soon in all official UN languages on the website of official UNSC documents and covers several other topics.