Data and Statistics form the foundation for national level analysis and policy making. In order to promote coherence in working with countries, there are three main modalities for country level support:
1) Providing direct support to countries to build their capacity to compile and use environment statistics, including for the environmental SDGs. This includes trainings on SDG indicators, national workshops and working with the UN Regional Commissions to build capacity at the regional level.
2) Developing manuals and online training materials for individual SDG indicators.
UNEP is working with national stakeholders, including UN Country Teams and Governments to improve the use of the environment related SDGs and environment statistics in national analysis and policy making. These efforts are led by UNEP's Regional Offices and utilize the World Environment Situation Room as the tool for visualizing and displaying environmental data.
The SDG and Environment Statistics Unit has developed a simple scorecard to capture data gaps and progress for each country. UNEP works with countries to understand the data, to identify data gaps and to contribute to analysis on environmental issues - the identification of data gaps also feeds into the work on statistical capacity building.
Additionally, UNEP works to integrate work on statistical compilation and data use in existing projects in order to strengthen the use of evidence in policy making. Specific projects with funding are described under the statistical capacity building; however, UNEP's SDG and Environment Statistics Unit also provides technical backstopping for projects such as the GEF, GCF and other projects upon request.