Gerard.Cunningham@unep.org

UNEP.Net Country Portals

ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION FOR DECISION MAKERS AND PUBLIC IN THE CIS

Workshop B: Construction of environmental information network St. Petersburg, 25-26 May 2004

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UNEP strategic framework 2006-7

“ Further efforts to strengthen the scientific basis of UNEP and the credibility of environmental data through supporting the development of improved data systems and development of scientific capacity at national and regional levels will be essential”

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Current feedback from donor countries

UNEP should do much more at the national level

Traditional normative (policy-making) role of UNEP needs to be supplemented by execution of practical projects (policy implementation)

Donor funding will become increasingly focussed on national level project implementation

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Environmental Information

Many different sources of definitions

European Union Council Directive 90/313/EEC

Europe’s Environment – The Dobris Assessment, 1995

Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998)

 Any information in written, visual, aural,

electronic orany other material form on: (a)    The state of elements of the environment,

such as air and atmosphere, water, soil, land, landscape and natural sites, biological diversity and its components, including genetically modified organisms, and the interaction among these elements;

(b)   Factors, such as substances, energy, noise and radiation, and activities or measures, including administrative measures, environmental agreements, policies, legislation, plans and programmes, affecting or likely to affect the elements of the environment within the scope of subparagraph (a) above, and cost-benefit and other economic analyses and assumptions used in environmental decision-making;

(c)    The state of human health and safety, conditions of human life, cultural sites and built structures, inasmuch as they are or may be affected by the state of the elements of the environment or, through these elements, by the factors, activities or measures referred to in subparagraph (b) above;

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Characteristics of Environmental Information

Multi-thematic(Content)

air, water, land, biodiversity, chemicals etc.

Amorphous(Format)

text, audio-visual, map, image, electronic

Multi-stakeholder(Demand)

User community (Government, Academia, NGOs, Civil society, Business)

Multi-stakeholder(Supply)

Provider community (Government, Academia, NGOs

Multi-access points(User- Provider linkages)

Internet, institutional networks, public access centres

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Country portals – the vision

An integrated information and data service on environmental matters, provided by a national network of key information providers and web-accessible via a GIS interface

(In Europe, the portal concept addresses information pillar of UNECE Aarhus Convention)

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Country portals – the practice

Portals with multiple links to other websites Portals that have multiple links and harvest

information from existing databases and/or

websites Database-driven portals that search other

websites in an organised manner Portals with GIS interfaces that harvest

information and data from multiple databases

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Country portals – examples

China http://www.zhb.gov.cn/english/SD/ India http://sdnp.delhi.nic.in Cuba http://www.medioambiente.cu Germany http://www.gein.de Sweden http://smn.environ.se/miljonat/english/ Norway http://62.92.38.7/ UK http://216.31.193.171/asp/1_introduction.asp

USA http://www.epa.gov/enviro/wme/

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http://www.UNEP.Nethttp://www.UNEP.Net

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•Thematic Portals•Geographic Portals

UNEP.Net - Global Environmental Portal

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Profile to portal evolutionNGO

Govt. Administrator

NGO Administrator

Country portal

Country profile

Decentralizedadministrators

Min of Env.

UBA Austrian Ecobureau (Ökobüro)

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Another perspective- a virtual portal extracted from disparate thematic portals

Thematic portal Country profile / Portal

GEO data portal (indicators)

ECOLEX (conventions)

Global coverage National coverage

GEO3.GRID.UNEP.CH

WWW.ECOLEX.ORG

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Environmental conventions

Environmental indicators

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Country portals – the challenges

Data & information is fragmented across

different institutional providers Data may not be available or may be outdated Political will to cooperate and share resources Technical capacity may vary across

institutions Development cost and cost recovery

mechanisms