The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) to jointly produce environmental economic accounts and coordinate the process of natural capital accounting in Namibia.
The Permanent Secretary, Dr. Malan Lindeque, signed the MoU on behalf of the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, and the Statistician General, Mr. Alex Shimuafeni, on behalf of the NSA, at a ceremony on 22 November 2017.
The MoU describes the respective areas of cooperation between MET and the NSA regarding natural capital accounting and related topics at national level.
Furthermore, the MoU provides for a framework within which the parties can develop and undertake collaborative activities and projects. It also refers to the establishment of a programme of technical cooperation as well as the dissemination and sharing of knowledge in the fields of natural capital accounting for the further development of the national statistical system.
The NSA is implementing the System of National Accounts (SNA) and produces National Economic Accounts, which provide detailed statistics on various economic sectors. These statistics, however, fail to fully take into account the impact of economic activities on the environment, and reversely, its harmful effects of pollution.
General principles and scope of cooperation
- The parties agreed that the production and dissemination of both tourism and environmental statistics is crucial to inform policy formulation and decision making for sustainable development in Namibia;
- The parties understand that Namibia’s economy is not dependent on man-made capital only, but on Natural Capital stocks and Biodiversity, therefore Namibia needs to account for its natural resources in the national accounts;
- The parties recognized each other’s mandate in terms of collection and dissemination of national statistics – environmental and tourism data in particular;
- The parties appreciate the comparative advantage of each other in the collection and compilation of environmental statistics;
- The parties agreed that the NSA is the sole legal entity responsible for the compilation of national statistics, and the Ministry of Environment and Tourism’s responsibility is to coordinate tourism and environmental legal policy, issues of policy implementation and sustainable development in Namibia; and
- The parties agreed to work towards implementing the Aichi targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to integrate biodiversity values into national accounting.
This MoU will remain in effect for a period of five years and will automatically be renewed for equal periods, unless one party terminates it.