The IMF's New Climate Change Indicators Dashboard: Experimental Data for Economic and Financial Analysis
by Alessandra SozziESRI Climate Change Social Protection
To develop the right measures to tackle climate change, governments need robust and comparable data. The new IMF Dashboard will help fill data gaps, so policymakers can undertake the macroeconomic and financial analysis that underpins effective policies
–IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva
On the occasion of the 2020 IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings, the IMF has launched a new Climate Change Indicators Dashboard: an international statistical initiative to address the growing need for climate-related data used in macroeconomic and financial policy analysis.
Challenge
Climate change poses a major threat to long-term growth and prosperity and has a direct impact on the economic well-being of all countries. The IMF has a role to play in helping its members address those challenges for which fiscal and macroeconomic policies are an important component of the appropriate policy response.
While the risks associated with climate change and its possible significant impacts for economies are widely acknowledged, key gaps remain in terms of measurement and timely data availability at a global scale detailing the complex and evolving exposures both within and across economic sectors.
Solution
As a first step in addressing this challenge, the IMF’s Statistics Department (STA) in cooperation with other IMF departments and international organizations, has published a platform that aims to become a comprehensive aggregator for climate-related economic indicators.
The Dashboard is organized around 4 macroeconomic categories: Economic Activity and Climate, Cross-Border, Financial, Physical and Transition Risks and Government Policy Indicators. The four categories broadly reflect four dimensions: production, consumption and final demand, financing, and government policies.
The rich ecosystem of applications from the ESRI ArcGIS Online toolbox and their seamless integration has allowed us to offer our users a data-driven and engaging platform to understand, query and download climate-related economic data and easily explore them through interactive charts and maps.
Impact
Although the road ahead is long, the Dashboard:
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Provides a broad range of users with easy to access climate change indicators for macroeconomic and financial stability analysis.
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Allows us to share experimental indicators, seek feedbacks for continuous improvements and engage in innovative approaches to collect and present climate change related data.
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Improves the timeliness of existing indicators based on IMF staff estimates, bringing frequency and timeliness of climate change data on par with other macroeconomic data.
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Increases country coverage of existing indicators and present an overall view of a country’s situation regarding climate change indicators.
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Forms a basis of international cooperation and collaboration on methodological development and data collection efforts.