The first Road Map for the development of climate change-related statistics is already available and is approved by the State Council on Statistics of the Republic of Armenia on 27 February 2020.

The document has been developed by the Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia with the support of the UNECE (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe) Statistical Division. The Road Map has been developed as a result of discussions with stakeholders. The primary goal of the discussions was to determine the problems related to the data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Expert Group of the UNDP Climate Change Programme provided a professional support to the working group by being regularly involved in discussions on data collection, procession, availability and publication. With the Expert Group’s collaborative actions and professional consultations it was possible to combine the analysis, collect the uncertainties and gaps in the existing data and propose solutions.

The Document aims to assess the current status of climate change-related national statistics and its transparent reporting as part of regular statistical data and to define further ways of development for it. The Road Map implies close cooperation between the stakeholders and respective state bodies particularly on improving the statistics of GHG emissions and climate change.

Armenia’s Road Map for development of its climate change-related statistics was prepared following the 2014 Conference of European Statisticians recommendations on climate-change related statistics, taking into account the requirements of the international climate change conventions and agreements to which Armenia is a signatory, including the Paris Agreement. The Road Map focuses on the priorities that are:

1. directly related to the statistics required for the compilation of Armenia’s GHG emissions inventory,
2. related to other statistics required for climate change analysis,
3. related to the statistical “infrastructure” (e.g., statistical methods and standards) required to produce climate change-related statistics.

The Document focuses on environmental, social and economic data that measure the human causes of climate change, the impacts of climate change on human and natural systems and the efforts of humans to avoid and/or adapt to the consequences of climate change. The following spheres of statistics are included in the Road Map:

1. statistics of GHG emissions,
2. statistics measuring human activities that are the source of GHG emissions (e.g., industry),
3. statistics measuring impacts of climate change on human and natural systems (e.g., damages to infrastructure from disasters),
4. climate change mitigation statistics (e.g., installation of solar, wind, geothermal  power),
5. statistics measuring efforts to adapt to the consequences of climate change (e.g., installation of residential air conditioning).

Development of this Road Map is an attempt to evaluate nowadays system of climate change-related statistics in Armenia in general, to analyze the gaps in the current data, to identify improvements and define the priority actions required to address them.

It will serve for improvement of the GHG reporting as an essential component of the Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) system to ensure broader transparency under Article 13 of the Paris Agreement.

The Road Map lays fruitful ground for organizational changes in the long term to support the development of climate change-related statistics across the entire statistical system. More detailed road maps for different groups of stakeholders will be possible to develop if sufficient support and opportunities will emerge.