Monitoring of the Environment in Central Asia (MONECA)

Nowadays CA countries develop and enhance the existing systems of collection, use, exchange and store of environmental information. The environmental data at the national level has different formats, units and does not fully reflect the state of the environment. There is no effective system of exchange and turnover of data among different state agencies. There are no universal databases with online access to the information between state agencies. Valuable environmental information collected during the implementation of international projects in countries is not accessible for the wide range of users.

There are three major areas that project covers:

• Institution and capacity building including working group meetings, thematic training and capacity building, strengthening policy and institutions relevant to environmental information and expert visits from the EU institutions for consultations and technical assistance to experts of CA.
• Production of environmental information compatible with Shared Environmental Information System, proposed by EU and making it accessible focusing on development of environmental indicators, support to SEIS compatible products such as National State of Environment Reports (NSoERs) and production of regional GIS layers and making them available online.
• Promotion of SEIS principles by means of civil society meetings and mass media.

The project was conducted in close consultations with European Environmental Agency (EEA), EUROSTAT and other EU institutions.

Improving environmental monitoring, reporting and data sharing in the Central Asian countries and in the region as a whole and strengthening links and partnerships between CA and EU institutions.

Project activities:

• Institutional capacity building, working groups meetings, thematic trainings for governmental and non-governmental organizations, visits of experts from the European Union to consult and provide technical assistance to Central Asian experts.

• Production of environmental information compatible with the principles of the Shared Environmental Information System proposed by the European Union, support for the development of interactive tools such as the National State of Environment Reports (NSoERs), creation of regional maps for several indicators in the Geographical Information System (GIS).

• Promoting the principles of the Shared Environmental Information System (SEIS) through civil society and the media.

• Trainings on collection, processing and use of selected indicators

• Reports and recommendations on compatibility of collected data with SEIS, development of infrastructure and system of storage at the national level

• Study tour to Europe for CA experts on SEIS

• Improved transboundary GIS layers of the selected territory available online

• Water quality regional data sets improved and available online for users

• NSoERs based on UNECE environmental indicators.

Links to prepared web reports in CA countries:

• Kyrgyzstan: http://nd.nature.gov.kg/ru/
• Turkmenistan: http://nature.bushluk.com/ru/ttgm/ekologicheskii-doklad/
  

Project manager – Saltanat Zhakenova

E-mail: szhakenova@carececo.org