South Africa: Technical Assistance Report-Report on Macro-relevant Climate Change Statistics Diagnostic Mission (July 17–21, 2023)

South Africa faces significant climate change challenges given its high dependency on coal energy and physical concentration of nature-related risks. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change projects that extreme temperatures to be on the upward trajectory. The increased frequency and intensity of nature-related risks are expected to have profound effect on human health, access to food and water, biodiversity, habitats and ecosystems, infrastructure, and human settlements. To implement climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, South Africa needs large amount of granular, relevant, and reliable data for evidence-based planning and just transition. Against this background, in July 2023 the International Monetary Fund’s Statistics Department conducted a diagnostic mission to support the authorities in developing a workplan for enhancing the environment and climate change statistics. Discussions with the various stakeholders indicated that there was a broad agreement to prioritize (a) the establishment of a centralized environmental and climate change database with formalized institutional arrangements for coordination, data sharing protocols, and communication of statistics, and (b) development of the first set of air emission accounts and reestablishment of the energy flow accounts. In the medium-term there is need to strengthen capacity for collection of statistics on government environmental expenditures and subsidies, especially from sub sovereign governments and municipalities, and tailored technical assistance/training on carbon footprints of foreign direct investments. The mission was financed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and hosted by Statistics South Africa.