The FDES provides guidance on a core set of environmental indicators that has proven beneficial to inform policy. It is designed to assist all countries in articulating environment statistics programmes by: (i) delineating the scope of environment statistics and identifying its constituents; (ii) contributing to the assessment of data requirements, sources, availability and gaps; (iii) guiding the development of multipurpose data collection processes and databases; and (iv) assisting in coordination and organization across institutions.
The FDES (Framework for the Development of Environment Statistics) describes the scope and components of environment statistics as measuring: