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Data Resources for Environmental Policy

Data Potpourri

CIA World Factbook
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/
The CIA World Factbook is an excellent source of general data on all countries in the world. There are data on numerous subjects including demographics, social/political indicators, economics/political economy and geography.

Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists Dataverse
https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/JAERE
The Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists publishes "original, full-length research papers that offer substantial new insights for scholars of environmental and resource economics." Datasets used in articles published in the journal are available via this Dataverse.

Paul Hensel's International Environmental Data Page
https://www.paulhensel.org/dataenv.html
This site, which is hosted by Dr. Paul Hensel, contains links to data on a variety of environmental topics such as fisheries, energy, water disputes, and agricultural production.

Quality of Government Institute Environmental Indicators Dataset (QoG-EI)
https://www.gu.se/en/quality-government/qog-data/data-downloads/environmental-indicators-dataset
The QoG-EI data "include the presence and strictness of environmental policies, the level of pressure on the environment (such as ecological footprint and emission levels), and public opinion on the environmental matters. The dataset also includes background geographical data such as the annual average rainfall and the size of land area, among others." The data are freely available to download in different formats. Be sure to consult the codebook for information about the sources, measurement, and coverage of individual variables.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Statistics
https://www.fao.org/statistics/en/
The FAO is a UN organization that is ostensibly devoted to alleviating world hunger. The FAO's collection of statistics and databases covers a variety of topics, such as water, agricultural production, and agricultural consumption. The geographic and time coverage vary by topic and database. Users can query the databases to create extracts of data of interest or can download the data in bulk format.

World Bank Environment
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/environment
This World Bank site contains links to various resources, including collections of environmental data and statistics. The Bank also produces more specialized data collections, such as the Wealth of Nations data on the sustainability of countries' growth trajectories and the Adjusted Net Savings data that incorporate the effects of environmental depletion. See also the environmental data section within the Bank's data collections.

World Development Indicators (World Bank)
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037712
The World Development Indicators provide convenient access to hundreds indicators on over 200 countries and territories. Data are available annually from 1960 forward, with variation across countries and indicators. The database is part of the Bank's Data Catalog of statistical databases and other data collections. There are also multiples tools available for importing WDI data directly into programs such as R and Stata.