Objective

Midsummer Analytics selected and reviewed best practices of organizations in four countries and one international agency; Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and the European Environmental Agency. These organizations were selected for their leadership in the production and dissemination of environment accounts and statistics, their long histories in the field and their broadly based programs that include both environmental statistics and environmental accounts. Within our research we found four key themes:

• the main factors in the success of environmental accounting and statistics programs
• the main approaches taken to satisfying user's needs and measurement of program success
• the practices relating to stakeholder outreach, and
• the approaches taken to encouraging innovation.

Our report presented the detailed findings of the study for each country/organization and outlines some key considerations for Statistics Canada.

Our Role

Midsummer Analytics identified potential informants for each organization who were interviewed by asking questions about the four research themes. Further information was collected via review of documents, reports, articles and websites identified as relevant by informants during interviews, through online research and through Midsummer Analytics' staff's own knowledge of the field. Our report provides detailed findings of the study for each country-organization and identifies a number of best practices for the production and dissemination of environmental accounts and statistics. The final section of the report outlines key considerations for Statistics Canada.