Green Data: Measuring the Environment

In this episode we explore how the ONS measures our natural environment and the green economy.

Relevant datasets: ONS Environmental Accounts

Transcript

MILES FLETCHER

Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK's Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher and this time we're getting back to nature as we explore the work of the ONS in measuring the economic and social value of the natural environment.

Is classical economic growth - as measured by gross domestic product or GDP - always achieved at the expense of the environment? What price can we put on the amenities our environment provides? What is the green economy and what are green jobs? And what are the key data to watch as policymakers strive for net zero carbon emissions, while also seeking to improve national prosperity?

Our guides through the rich and perhaps under explored landscape of environmental data are ONS's Deputy Director for Environmental Statistics Analysis, Ian Townsend; Head of Natural Capital Accounts, Gemma Thomas; and Sophie Barrand, Monetary Accounts lead in the Environmental Accounts team.

Welcome to you all.

Ian to come to you first. The ONS is mainly known for measuring the economy and the population of the UK. So, what exactly is its role when it comes to the environment? What are we seeking to achieve? What do we do? What do we publish?

IAN TOWNSEND
So the environment is quite a broad topic that links with a lot of other issues and a lot of different national and devolved government departments and other related bodies producing statistics on the environment. And with all that range of statistics, we tend to focus at the ONS on the intersections between our environment and both the economy and society. This includes measuring what we call the Low Carbon and renewable energy economy, how many green jobs there are, the greenhouse gas emissions produced by different economic sectors, and valuing the services that nature provides to us, as well as providing rapid insights into what people and business think about climate change in the environment and their actions or indeed otherwise.

MF
And what are the major publications that come out of the ONS that people ought to be looking at to get a sense of what we're saying about the environment and its value?

IT
So I mentioned a couple in the introduction there - things like low carbon and renewable energy economy, green jobs, etc... and our emissions figures. But perhaps one that is quite worth bringing to the fore is our natural capital accounts. So, it's something we've done for several years, which basically looks at the value that ecosystems provide to nature and ecosystems provide to us, and the services that provides. So, we bring this out as a report every year - have done so for several years - and that looks beyond the economy, beyond gross domestic product, to look at all those natural resources and we found that in 2021, the total value of all those natural assets was around one and a half trillion pounds. It's such a big figure, I think it can be quite hard for people to grasp. But a useful comparison might be that it's not that far off the 1.7 trillion pounds that homes in the UK were valued at in 2021 as well.

MF
It's very difficult to arrive at a financial figure or value like that. Can you just give us a brief explanation of how it's calculated?

IT
Sure. So, there are internationally agreed guidelines that we follow around how to measure or indeed account for the current value of what natural capital could provide for us and our current and future generations. And all that process, all those guidelines are aligned with how we measure the GDP in the economy. It's really quite a complex exercise and includes things like the value of trees, rivers, peatlands, and many other habitats and natural resources in them. We've been developing and improving these approaches for probably at least 10 years, and probably have some of the most developed accounts in this form globally. Our estimates have improved over the years. But there are some things that we don't cover. So, in a way, this is probably best seen as a kind of partial and minimum value, even though it's already very large. And it's also part of a wider mission that the ONS has to capture the value of what's called missing capital, things that we don't currently measure so well in gross domestic product. So that's including social capital as well as natural capital. So that's called 'inclusive wealth' and that's another publication the ONS produces that people might be interested to have a look at.

MF
And it's important, I guess, to have this economic value of the environment so that can be compared against the traditional measure of economic progress and prosperity, which of course is GDP. And it's sometimes – and we've heard this in other podcasts - because GDP is like the big beast of the economic statistical world. It's very important, it's very influential, but of course it does have significant weaknesses and omissions, and notably its lack of account for environmental factors being notoriously one of those.

IT
Sure. And actually, there's a process going on right now internationally that would bring some of that into the way that we measure some of the key economic indicators. But I think one of the key things you say is putting out there is a measure of how our natural capital assets are doing. But I think the other real benefit of these statistics, and particularly the natural capital accounts, is that it helps literally to account for nature to give an estimate of some of the benefits that the environment does provide. So, when people make decisions, they can take that into account. We're not exactly saying that nature has this given value. It's more that that's the value that we've estimated so far that provides those. It helps people to make sure that when they're taking their decisions, they take into account what would happen if we reduced or depleted that natural capital, and indeed, the benefits we might get in the future if we were to increase that natural capital as well.

MF
Because – and this is the other side of the question – high per capita GDP often goes with high carbon emissions in an economy, doesn't it? This way, we can look at the other side of the balance sheet and say, well, yes, you might be achieving this high economic performance in traditional terms, but look at the cost on the other side and, as you say, this is part of a big international movement to recognize that called 'beyond GDP', which is a topic we've covered in previous podcasts already.

IT
Sure. I think, just getting back to your point around GDP and emissions one of the things that we produce in the ONS is a piece around a different emissions measurements there are, and actually if you look at those, you'll see that over time, all those measures have been reducing. So there is an element to which whilst the economy is expanding, we are actually reducing emissions on all three different measures that are available.

MF
And we say the environment is - we're putting it at 1.5 trillion pounds – that's the capital value of the natural environment, broadly equivalent to the value of all the houses in the UK. Some people might say that's a low figure perhaps you can think we measure human capital being much, much greater than that but that's a debate for another time. But explain for us who is using this number, how does it inform decision making at the moment at national and local level? How might it influence policymakers in future do you think?

IT
Sure, I think it's not necessarily about the big number at the top although that is one that will get a lot of interest from people and as you say, it might be an underestimate. I mentioned that there are some aspects of nature that we don't currently measure. But in terms of how it's used lots and lots of detail that's available underneath that key figure in the natural capital accounts we publish every year, at kind of macro level. The figures we use are important considerations for decision making by UK and devolved governments. So Defra published a policy paper, for example, on the accounts, I think, a couple of years back, which looked at what the key takeaways for policy there were from there, and we think that some of the figures were used in some of the bids that departments put in for the 2021 Spending Review. I think at the micro level figures are definitely used in the analysis of costs and benefits that are used for judging different government projects. It's part of what Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs call enabling a natural capital approach - it is in that guidance, and that has a lot of impact at kind of micro level. We're also publishing more and more data from the natural capital accounts at a local level. And making that available means that councils and others can use that in their decision making as well. And we're also building our connections and encouraging use where we can and it's also something that's being worked on internationally as well, which we're part of working with other national statistics offices and the UN.

MF
Turning to Gemma then, you're the head of natural capital accounts at the ONS. Let's get into the nuts and bolts then of what contributes to this valuation, this figure, because by understanding that we can better understand what it contributes to the economy and what it contributes to our wellbeing. Talk us through those elements if you would.

GEMMA THOMAS
Yeah, of course. So as Ian mentioned, there's some international standards that we abide by, but essentially what we do is we say, okay, what services does nature provide to us? And we identify those services, and then we attempt to put a value on them. Now those services can fall into three broad categories. The first would be provisioning services, which might be what you would expect the environment to provide and nature to provide such as things like timber, oil and gas, so it's all the goods that are provided by the Environment, water, renewable energy, and they are what we call provisioning services...

MF
How we exploit the environment, to put it coldly.

GT
You said that Miles, not me. [Laughing] But yes, it's where we capture the goods that the environment does provide. But the other things that nature does for us is it regulates, so regulated services are another part of services and where nature helps maintain the quality of the environment. And so a sort of obvious example of this can be where vegetation removes pollutants from the air, but also nature can mitigate noise. So if you're in an urban area, and there's lots of trees that can mitigate noise pollution, or heat, it can regulate heat. So that's another example. And the other example that is maybe not so obvious is what we call cultural services and they are the non-material benefits that we obtain, such as recreation. And actually, in many of our publications, we have found that those services provide the greatest asset value, the cultural services, actually almost two thirds in 2021 of all of that 1.5 trillion figure, 950 billion of that was from cultural services.

MF
That's why I mentioned exploitation - like it or not it's the traditional economic exploitation of the environment, when we talk about those things that we take out of the environment. But what the ONS has established, certainly when it comes to the UK's environment, it's actually the amenity value of the environment, which contributes more to our economy.

GT
Yes, exactly. And actually, when you say about that exploitation, this is one of the benefits of the natural capital accounts because we measure actually the value of 16 different services at this moment in time and it allows us to be able to see things like actually, in terms of value, for example, it is more valuable to the UK to have pollution removal from woodlands than it is to obtain timber or wood fuel, and we put values on that. So yes, as you say, it's cultural and recreation. And that's in a couple of ways. There's expenditure on recreation, and tourism. But there's also, and this is the biggest asset that we've found, is health benefits from recreation that was worth in 2021, nearly half a trillion so 445 billion.

MF
Crikey, that is a big number! Can you unpack that for us then, what are the health benefits that we're itemizing there?

GT
Research has found, outside of the ONS, that spending time in nature has a positive impact on your health and wellbeing. But interestingly, you need to spend on average two hours a week in nature. So some of our figures, and this is the great thing that you can sort of dig under the hood a little bit, is you can see things like maybe more people are visiting nature, but if they're not doing it for long enough or regularly enough, they can't obtain that health benefit. And that is what our data has found in 2021 and 2022. There was a slight drop in the sort of health benefits gained from nature because people weren't going for long enough. In terms of measurement. We have experts in the team who are excellent and they work with lots of people across government, but essentially it's sort of calculated in the number of years of a life lived in perfect health and then what we do is we say how much would the NHS have to spend to provide the equivalent health benefits and that's how it's done. But yeah, it's just a really good example of how that sort of top figure can sound interesting but when you dig in is a real story and there of nuance.

MF
I guess that also reflects the importance of when we're talking about the environment. It's not just the great outdoors, it's not the wide open spaces necessarily. It's about having environmental areas near towns and cities as well where people can get out and feel the benefits of exercise and fresh air and so forth.

GT
Exactly. And actually it's really interesting you mentioned that, because some of the things that are found that can be quite difficult to explain to people is that actually nature can have more value in some situations in urban areas than in rural areas. So if you take the example of pollution, there's more pollution in urban areas and there are more people breathing in that pollution. So by having trees and woodlands, etc within them that can absorb that pollution, that means that there's a higher value in that. That's why we have to be careful in how we explain all of our figures because sometimes a higher value - not in general, not for the top level, but for some of them - is not necessarily a good thing. Because if you think about it, if there's absolutely no pollution, then trees wouldn't be removing that pollution, and the value of that would be zero. So it's a challenging thing to communicate and get across to users, yeah.

MF
It's a fascinating equation, isn't it? And also in terms of outputs, of course, we can't ignore the growing influence of renewables, which of course is energy from the environment.

GT
Yes, exactly. Yes. And that's a service that's actually seen some really big growth in its asset size as we possibly would expect over recent years.

MF

Give us the numbers on that.

GT

The renewable energy was worth 40.7 billion, although I have to say - which will be surprising to some people - the oil and gas asset value is actually still higher than that at 111 billion. So, it shows that although things are changing and renewable energy has seen the biggest growth, at present oil and gas would still have a higher asset value.

MF
We'll talk a little about the dash for net zero, or progress towards Net Zero at least, a little bit later. But nonetheless, it can't be ignored that is renewable electricity provision increased by we're saying 275% between 2011 and 2021. The last estimates - that's 21,899 gigawatt hours. So almost a threefold increase and, you know, without being political the drift of policy is to increase that much, much more.

GT
Yeah, we have. We have seen that, and you'll see that across all of our figures. Renewable is definitely a growing sector.

MF
We've talked about what we get out in a traditional economic sense of course, but historically the biggest example has been agriculture, and farmland. There's a big debate going on about the use of farmland and again, in classical GDP terms, the contribution of agriculture has not been great because it's been maintained by subsidies traditionally - at the risk of upsetting the farming community. Could we say that the decline in closed farmland being reported is because less and less of our natural environment is devoted now to agriculture? Are we saying that we can move away from that as long as the other economic benefits of the environment are being delivered on the other side of the equation?

GT
Well, I think with any sort of figures, you need to look at it in the round. So, you could look in isolation within the natural capital accounts, but in reality you'd need to look at, you know, employment and those sorts of things. I mean, the interesting thing about the natural capital accounts is that technically farmed land - we need to look at it in its raw state. I mean, we can't yet separate that with our figures, but it's about what nature provides us. So, for example, we wouldn't include farmed fish, but we would include wild fish catch. So, with the national capital accounts, what we aim to do is separate that out. But in terms of the amount of farmland we can record that and we can publish that and look at it, but I think for anyone making decisions, they probably need to look at the whole.

MF
But certainly we're saying that woodland, for example, is contributing more to the economy in terms of its beneficial effects in offsetting carbon and removing pollution, than it actually contributes through the felling of timber.

GT
Yes, yes, that is very clear from our figures.

MF
And indeed there are some other takeaways from the publication as well as. In cruder financial terms, just living closer to nature can be good for the value of your house.

GT
Yes, yes. So, where we don't have a price, we have to look at a way to value it. And so, we know that being close to nature or having a nice view can add value to your house. I think it added around 1.5% To the average house price in 2021, or just under 5000 pounds, 4700. It did vary though by the type of property and flats and maisonettes it added around 4%. So yes, being close to nature and accessing nature, having access to green space is really important and in fact we have publications on our urban accounts, which pull that out, and as well on our house prices, where those interested can look in more detail.

MF
Of course this continues to be a big area of 'work in progress'. What other measures could potentially be included, particularly as the response to global warming continues to be refined and developed?

GT
So yes, at the moment, I believe it was mentioned earlier that we cast this almost as an underestimate. We know there are services we're not capturing. So, for example, flood regulating services. So how much nature helps in preventing floods, that is an area that we are hoping to develop, but it is quite challenging. We do look for areas where we can maybe produce more local stats to help the decisions at the local level. Because it's not just our data that's really important. It is also our methods. Our methods get used by sort of local authorities and those who maybe want to produce their own sort of natural capital accounts for their region. So, it's something we're looking to develop.

MF
And I guess it's going to be vital if we're looking at an era of increased house building. Once again, we can look at the other side of the balance sheet and say, okay, this is this is going to be the environmental cost of the development before major decisions are taken.

GT
Yes, essentially. It's just about making it easier for decision makers to see that actually it does have this value, rather than before when it would be anecdotal. Now by having these figures, you can measure those up and use it in sort of cost benefit analysis. Yeah.

[Music Break]

MF
Well, that's a fascinating look under the bonnet of natural capital, a concept that's clearly evolving in stature, in a really fascinating and important way. Another area that the ONS is very much involved in, and a very important set of publications that the ONS produces are the environmental accounts. Sophie Barrand joins us now. Sophie, you're the lead on monetary accounts in that team. Just to start, can you explain for us what's covered in the environmental accounts; what's the publication for?

SOPHIE BARRAND
Yeah, so our environmental accounts ultimately looks to measure the contribution of the environment to the economy and the impact of economic activity on the environment. So, when we're thinking about changes in an area that's constantly evolving, it's rather a tricky thing. So, in general, what we consider is how our measures work as different pieces of this net zero puzzle where each informs the other. So, our accounts produce information on UK greenhouse gas emissions, things like economic measures of low carbon activities, government revenue from environmental taxes, and things like the use of different energy types and whether we're moving to more renewable alternatives, just to name a few. So ultimately, we're looking to quantify the flows that impact on the environment through both physical and monetary ways.

MF
So natural capital if you like is the stock, and in the Environmental Accounts we're looking at the flows, we're looking at the nature of change.

SB
Absolutely, yes. So, we're looking at measures of things that can sometimes be considered as the green economy. So, if we were to try and put a value on things like the environmental goods and services sector, the services and goods that sort of flow within that space, we look to produce annual estimates of that data. And within that we can also draw from different measures from each parts of our accounts. And because we produce our data on what's called a residency basis, that is any activity as part of UK registered businesses, it means that it's aligned with our national accounts data so we can start to compare across our measures, and consider things like how does our data compare to measures such as GDP or GVA and where we sort of fit within that space. So, it's really interesting to uncover some of these trends.

MF

And when we talk about progress towards net zero, this is where the action happens, isn't it? This is where progress towards that is tracked.

SB
So within net zero, the measures that typically get used to action net zero is the territorial approach to measuring greenhouse gas emissions. So those are figures produced by DESNZ and what we do is we communicate that information on a residency basis to align with the national accounts side of things.

MF
DESNZ being the government department concerned here.

SB
Yes, so the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero. And what we can do with our accounts is that we can compare with regards to broader measures such as GDP and GVA, how we can capture some of those trends, but what we're ultimately seeing across all three of the measures of greenhouse gas emissions is that they are falling over time, which we can go into a bit more detail on.

MF
Yeah, well let's get stuck into that detail because it's a crucial area of public policy right now. And it's surely going to continue to be over the next few years. What are the data telling us at the moment then, what are the most compelling findings around greenhouse gas emissions and carbon generally?

SB
Yeah, so what we've seen is a reduction in overall greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. Though we have experienced an increase in recent years that does reflect the economy coming back from the period affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, and what we've seen is that the largest contribution to the decrease across our time series has come from energy industries such as electricity and gas supply, and what we've seen as well is the compositional shift within this space where there's been a shift away from fossil fuel use and a move towards renewable sources. So, for example, in 2022, we saw the energy from renewable sources accounted for nearly 14% of all energy use in the UK. And although that figure has been increasing, we are still seeing a large reliance on fossil fuels, and it remains at 81% in 2022.

MF
You talk about the substantial reduction in emissions, what about the suggestion that is sometimes made that countries, like the UK, have effectively exported their emissions simply by closing down their heavy fossil fuel driven industries?

SB
Just in terms of exporting emissions, it's a really tricky space.

MF

How so?

SB

So, for example, within our statistics, because we cover a residency basis, we do capture some parts that might sort of deviate into that space. Because we measure UK registered businesses and residents the effect of things like UK tourism and the emissions data for that is going to be captured within that space. But then for example, when we look at the aviation industry within the UK, we do capture some of that so where we have the UK registered businesses such as British Airways, activity from that space across our accounts will be captured, but things like Ryanair wouldn't be captured because I believe it's an Irish registered business.

MF
I was going to ask you how flights are accounted for, because we're told constantly, of course, that they are a big contributor to emissions. So if you're a British airline you count towards UK emissions, it's not flights flying over Britain or flights terminating or starting in Britain. It's a much more economic analysis, then, it's aeroplanes that are essentially British owned, is that how we do it?

SB
Exactly yeah, so it's UK registered. So if they're a company that are registered as being a UK business, then it will capture that activity, but there's no sort of physical boundaries that you might experience with other measures. It's more of, as you say, an economic term where it's more about the registration of the business.

MF
Well that does say something about what a global issue this is really. If it's not measured in that local way, it's an issue for the world to address collectively.

SB
Absolutely. And by combining those international comparisons, it should give you that full picture of exactly what's happening there. We can do that across different measures of our accounts as well. And for example, within the environmental taxation space, we put our taxation data in the context of the sort of broader international space where we compare against EU countries for example, so with all of our measures, what we're really looking to do is to sort of piece together this net zero puzzle, and each of our measures look to inform the other, and it is not without that broad picture that you can actually start to understand some of these.

MF
Certainly where we are now, it's households that are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and previously of course it used to be the industrial sector. So it explains the policy focus doesn't it on households and vehicles as well, because those are the big emitters of greenhouse gases as far as the UK is now concerned.

SB
Yes. So you touched on households there, as you say they now emit more greenhouse gas emissions than any other economic sector. And while households do tend to have limited influence over emissions related to things like heating their homes, we have seen that half of all household emissions do come from travel. And as you can imagine, we saw dips in these in the Coronavirus period. Where the biggest emitters used to be energy and manufacturing there has been a switch from oil to gas and things around improved processes. And the more recent increase that we've seen in renewables has seen big declines in greenhouse gas emissions from these two sectors in particular.

MF
Have we seen any lasting impacts from the pandemic or have things just reverted back to exactly as they were before?

SB
So it depends on which measure you're looking at as to how continuous the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic was with our statistics. So for example, with our environmental taxes, we saw quite a big dip there after a relatively stable annual increase. Since then it's pretty much bounced back to what it was in 2019 and we'll look to future years to see whether this continues. Transport is now responsible for 16% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions and because of its increased importance in our stats when all transport stops during the pandemic greenhouse gas emissions did fall dramatically by about 11% or so, and with the recovering of transport we have seen the greenhouse gas emissions have increased in recent years.

MF
So to that extent people have reverted to their same old pre-pandemic ways, which raises a whole question of how policymakers can influence behaviors and of course the classic way for policymakers to stop people doing things is to tax them. And the effectiveness, or otherwise, of environmental taxes Sophie is something we also look into, because that's a very important factor in all this. Tell us what we've found about all that.

SB
The intention of those is to create these behavioural shifts and allow people to be making those decisions to move towards more environmentally friendly alternatives. So what we found is that through this taxation we have raised 52 and a half billion pounds in 2023 in the UK, with fuel duty being the single largest tax contributor to this at nearly half the amount. This coincides quite nicely with what we're seeing on the greenhouse gas emissions data where consumer expenditure from car transport is contributing largely to this. In the international space, when we look at our environmental tax figure as a percentage of GDP, this now amounts to 2% of GDP. So that sits a bit lower than the EU average, which currently sits at 2.3%.

MF
What other environmental taxes are there then that are included, which again, might be varied or even increased in the years to come?

SB
That's a very good question. So we're constantly considering how our statistics might evolve, and how our definitions might evolve. Some examples about environmental taxes include things like energy taxes, so things like your fuel duty and taxes on the type of energy sources that you're using. We then also have things like transport taxes. So these are air passenger duty, and things like that. But then we also have what we call pollution and resource taxes. So one of the most recently introduced ones of those is plastic packaging tax. So we do split up the different tax types in our release.

MF
And again, on a local level, there's the whole question of how effective low emission zones are, and the crackdown on old diesel cars and so forth. Is that local picture available if you're a local authority seeking to investigate the effectiveness of measures like that?

SB
So we don't currently disaggregate our data into below UK level unfortunately, but we are constantly discussing these things and I believe there's a discussion this year around the low emission zones and how we classify these. We generally follow the national tax list when it comes to categorizing our different taxes. So we're regularly reviewing these and considering which could be considered environmental and which wouldn't.

MF
Interesting. Finally then with you Sophie, the whole question of jobs and employment, because if you look at traditional economic measures you want to have lots of people in productive industries making things, creating economic value. When the environmental factor comes in of course, you can see reasons why it's not such a great idea to have lots of people working in high emitting industries, and that's where the whole concept of green jobs - and on the other side of the fence, non-green jobs – is something the ONS has been developing its work around as well.

SB
Yes, absolutely. So in looking at employment, which is an area of the economy with high user interest, particularly with regards to the green job space, we can look at things like jobs in high emitting industries as an example. So what we've seen is that five industry sections have accounted for around 82% of total industry greenhouse gas emissions across the UK, and of these five industries they employed around 16%. So that's one in every six or so UK employees.

MF
Now there are some quite substantial variations around the UK regionally, when it comes to the numbers of people employed in these non-green jobs, aren't there?

SB
Yeah, so what we're seeing is that one in five Midlands workers were in high emissions industries in this time compared with one in 12 workers in London.

MF
And Gemma then, this idea of a green job and a non-green job, how do we define those two things?

GT
Well Miles, it's really, really challenging, and it's something that ONS has been working on for a long time and it's been a real leader in the field. You'd think, "Oh, green job", and that term is used a lot. But in reality, it can mean different things to different people. ONS has done a lot of work over the years like with the low carbon economy, measuring that where that is looking at things in the low carbon and renewable energy space. But we realised that people wanted more and they wanted this definition and after a lot of work and discussion, we have agreed a definition where it's as: 'Employment and activity that contributes to protecting or restoring the environment, including those that mitigate or adapt to climate change.' And I think the key thing is it's wider than net zero. It's also about nature. It's also about jobs that are protecting nature, not just those that are helping to reduce emissions. And then in terms of non-green or brown as it's sometimes called, that is a challenge. And that's where Sophie has talked about, we look at high emitting industries. Because in reality you need to be practical, and those are the industries that maybe we'll see the most change - the industries that have high emissions. The real challenge, though, is that our current classification systems, you know, some of those green jobs will occur in those high emission industries. You think of things like the energy sector, not only does it have oil and gas jobs, but it also has renewable energies, and our way that we currently do economic statistics doesn't allow us to break that down. And that's the big challenge and that's what people are grappling with including us at the ONS.

MF
Thank you Gemma. And Ian then, finally from you. This whole question of nailing down precisely what is a green job, what is the green economy - as we've heard from Gemma, it's very dynamic and there is a lot of work going on in this area. But where is this all going internationally? How are we collaborating with other statistical organisations around the world on this, and is there anything we can learn from other countries?

IT
I think in many ways we're near the front of the pack on this internationally. So a lot of the work we've been doing is about sharing our experiences, and in the kind of broader space of environment measurement we're very involved with the UN in particular, particularly on natural capital accounts. And we're also looking at some major revisions to some of the systems that underlie how we do these things. So for example, there's a big shift internationally in the way that we measure GDP and there's an element of that which is around the environment, so we're engaged with that too. So quite a lot going on in that space. We also have regular bilaterals with other national stats institutes as well, to share learning and understand what other people are doing. And obviously, the more organisations doing this work, the more mutual learning we can benefit from as well.

MF
And how do you see things developing from here on, in terms of ONS's measurement of the environment?

IT
I think we've been able to do quite a lot over the last few years, building on great work over a much longer period. And there's a lot that we could be doing- of course the challenge is always about channeling the resources available to the highest impact activity that we can be doing. I think one of the things we're going to be looking at is to move to accredited 'official statistics' status for the natural capital accounts. It might sound a bit inward looking but it's a real mark of quality that we'd like to have, and it would set it alongside economic statistics that have that kind of accreditation. We're also reflecting on, of course, the new government's priorities following the general election. One of the things that we've been experiencing quite a lot of demand for, and particularly from local and combined authorities across the country is around greater granularity for our environmental data - so data at Local Authority / Combined Authority levels. So that might be in the mix. It's something we've been thinking about and gradually releasing more for. We'll also continue to be working across the ONS and across the wider government statistics service on the topic as well, so do watch out for collaborations in that space. And of course, as we've just talked about, the international aspects as well. And of course, we always welcome interest and feedback in our work, so if people are interested, please do get in touch.

MF
I'm sure they will. And it's worth pointing out to our listeners that once a quarter, the ONS publishes key statistics on Wellbeing and Beyond GDP, which can help people understand the environment in the context of the economy. And I think on the same day you can also check out the latest quarterly greenhouse gas emissions data.

That's it for another episode of 'Statistically Speaking'. Thanks to Gemma Thomas, Sophie Barrand and Ian Townsend for joining us. And of course as ever thanks to you for listening.

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I'm Miles Fletcher and from myself, and our producer Steve Milne... goodbye.

ENDS