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The challenge of developing environmental statistics: the case of
Morocco
(Preliminary)
Aware of its vulnerability to climate change, Morocco adopted the
Declaration on Environment and Development of the Rio de Janeiro
World Summit in 1992 and ratified the United Nations Convention Cadre
for Climate Change (CCNUCC) in 1995 and the Kyoto Protocol in 2002
and has been considering environmental protection as a priority in all its
development projects.
Morocco’s commitment was confirmed by a strong political will resulting
in the development of a first National Strategy for Environmental
Protection and Sustainable Development in 1995, broken down in a
national action plan for Environment ‘‘PANE’’ (1997/2001). In addition,
significant efforts were undertaken over the last few years on the
institutional and regulatory levels. Several environmental laws were
adopted aiming at water management, streamlining, environmental
protection and enhancement, air pollution reduction, and waste
management. Further, a draft national Charter on environment and
sustainable development is being developed. This regulatory framework,
which includes financial incentives and tax exemptions, is being
supported by new funding tools and mechanisms including the Clean
Development Mechanism established under the Kyoto Protocol.
Parallel with these strategies, Morocco engaged recently in developing
and improving its environmental statistical system to ensure the
production of reliable environmental statistics necessary for decision
making, monitoring and progress assessment.
Environmental statistics in Morocco
In its current situation, the production of environmental statistics in
Morocco is scattered among several institutions.
 The Statistics directorate of the High Commission for Planning
which produces many statistics through its surveys and censes. The
information collected is mainly related to access to water,
electricity, sewage and solid wastes networks, lighting, etc.
 High Commission for Water, Forests and Desertification Control
produces mainly information about forestry, forest fires,
reforestation, and desertification, etc.
 The Secretariat of State in Charge of Water and Environment:
Provides statistics related to rain fall, water resources, monitoring
floods, etc.
 National office of Drinking water: Releases regularly statistics
about production and consumption of water.
 Other important producers include the Ministry of Equipment,
Ministry of interior, Ministry of Energy and Mining, Ministry of
Agriculture, and many other institutions.
Morocco produces several environmental indicators and is progressively
widening the scope of coverage of these indicators. However, compared
to best international practices there are still many lacking indicators and
the produced data still suffer from many drawbacks that make it
sometimes useless for monitoring:
 Many indicators are produced on punctual basis and there is a lack
of time series necessary for monitoring and progress assessment
(example greenhouse gas emission is estimated for 1994, 2000 and
2004; the list of endangered species was updated for the last time in
1997, etc.).
 Some of the available indicators are rough estimates and the
reliability of data differs according to producer and nature of the
indicator.
These drawbacks are natural consequences of the current situation of the
production system which faces many difficulties, mainly:
 The diversity of producers and lack of coordination.
 Absence of harmonization among producers.
 The low level of technical know-how in some fields which
sometimes make it difficult to produce some indicators requiring
high skills.
Improving environmental statistics
To improve environmental statistics, it is necessary to reinforce
coordination among producers and involve the statistical office in all
steps of environmental data production. It is also necessary to improve
the technical capacity of different stakeholders particularly through
training of the staff in charge of data producing.
For such a highly technical domain, international cooperation can play an
important role in developing environmental statistics in developing
countries. In the case of Morocco, the Euro-Mediterranean statistical
cooperation program MEDSTAT contributed significantly to improve
coordination among main institutions in charge of data production. The
participation of different national stakeholders in this program with the
statistical office as a focal point contributed to reinforce the relationships
between these stakeholders. It is thanks to this program that a chapter on
environmental statistics was added in the yearbook of Morocco and
published since 1999.
In the same way Morocco, undertook with the assistance of UN DESA
((Division for sustainable development and statistics Division), an
attempt to produce satellite accounts for water in 2004.
In the near future the political will and the search for a sustainable
development model will favor the development of environmental
statistics. Many discussions are underway to unify efforts of different
partners to develop a more complete integrated environmental and
economic system.