During the Seventh “Environment for Europe” Ministerial Conference in Astana the Central Asian countries committed to introduce the concept of Shared Environmental Information Systems (SEIS) and to conduct regular environmental assessments. CAREC assists Central Asian (CA) countries to participate in the respective UN- and EU initiatives: “Environment for Europe“ (EfE)1, “Assessment of Assessments“ (A0A) and “Shared Environmental Information System“ (SEIS)2, while supporting the Central Asian states to achieve the above mentioned goals on developing SEIS and regular environmental assessments, CAREC gained an in depth understanding of the specific needs of the region and of the individual countries to improve environmental data management and environmental reporting. CAREC experience from SEIS related and AoA projects underlined the need for methodological support to establish regular systems for adaptation and development of UNECE‘s environmental indicators recommended for Eastern Europe Caucasus and Central Asia countries. There is a need to dose gaps on national- and regional level on indicators, allowing comparable and compatible data to be used for environmental monitoring, reporting and establishing SEIS in CA region.
Country specific background
Kazakhstan has developed environmental indicators as recommended by the UNECE. These indicators are provided in the Statistical yearbook on “Environmental protection and sustainable development of Kazakhstan” produced by the Agency for Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Recently,
this set of environmental indicators became available at the Agency website (www.stat.gov.kz). However, some of the given indicators lack data on consistent parameters that comprise a particular indicator set. This requires further improvement of methods and approaches for collecting required data. This task is currently addressed by the EU funded FLERMONECA (Forest and biodiversity governance including environmental monitoring in CA) project. In FLERMONECA CAREC is responsible for the implementation of the MONECA (Environmental monitoring in Central Asia) component which will provide consistency and avoid duplication between the two projects.
In Uzbekistan, the State Committee for Nature Protection is preparing State of Environment Reports (S0ER). The last report was issued in 2013 covering the period from 2008 to 2011. The country also established an environmental indicators database, which includes 93 indicators. Today this database is not taken advantage of by the state agencies that deal with environmental information and inaccessible for the public. Consultations with the state agencies during the inception phase of FLERMONECA have revealed the need for Uzbekistan to improve the database – not only from standpoint of technical infrastructure but also in terms of harmonizing the indicators in line with the recommended UNECE guidelines. Efforts made by the government to streamline coordination of environmental data management will be supported within the frame of FLERMONECA.
In Kyrgyzstan the State Agency for Environmental Protection and Forestry supported by UNDP/UNEP and other international agencies has recently developed a SoER covering the period from 2006 to 2011. In this report, Kyrgyzstan applied for the first time the 36 environmental indicators recommended by the UNECE. However, the review of indicators’ content revealed that most indicators are not appropriately backed with relevant data. Further methodological advisory support is needed to obtain and process primary data to overcome these shortcomings.
Turkmenistan and Tajikistan have not yet developed a regular System or a methodology for the preparation of SoERs. This fact underlines the necessity to adapt UNECE environmental indicators and gather data on a regular basis in order to regularly report on the state of the environment and establish SEIS. This project aims to support Turkmenistan by building capacities in the field of environmental reporting, in line with UNECE guidelines.
The country specific findings indicate that environmental data management in the region requires comparable indicators that serve both the process of structured environmental reporting as well as the collection of environmental data for SEIS. This is in line with the objectives of the Swiss Regional Strategy for Central Asia 2O12-2O15.
CAREC in dose consultation with EEA, UNECE and FOEN supported Turkmenistan developed an online version of the State of the Environment Report and in establishing a regular and sustainable process for the preparation of this report. Several coordination meetings with the project working group, tailor made consultations and trainings have built capacities of state organizations and project consultants, and strengthened environmental reporting processes in the country. A final workshop was conducted with national stakeholders and representatives of state agencies responsible for environmental information management to share lessons learned and experiences among project beneficiaries. It was planned to support Turkmenistan filling the gaps the country faces regarding environmental indicators and reporting by providing support in re-designing and re-developing statistical processes to enable an adaptation to UNECE indicators. Specifically, the project supported the introduction of UNECE guidelines — including data format and accessibility — into environmental reporting procedures. This enabled a better access of policy makers and the general population to environmental information, as well as support the establishment of SEIS. Several consultants were involved to build capacities of governmental organizations, gather data and meta-data and develop SoER chapters. These activities have been implemented in tight collaboration with the MONECA project to ensure a good consistency between them. In this regard, it was planned that the biodiversity and air chapters as well as the annotated outline of the SoER would be developed through MONECA. In the meantime, chapters on wastes, climate change, water pollution, environmental management would be developed through FOEN support. A joint MONECA-FOEN working group has been created and thoroughly involved in project implementation and supervision. The project primarily developed online resources since they do not require approval from the cabinet of ministers, a long and unpredictable procedure. In this regard, the main project result was an online version of the SoER including the above mentioned chapters. This required upgrading the present website of the Ministry of Nature Protection to be able to display the SoER in a convenient and user-friendly format. Discussions were also held with relevant agencies to develop a hard version. Recommendations have been developed to institutionalize the development and release of the SoER on a regular basis and discussed with the Ministry of Nature Protection and other relevant Agencies. Project results were shared with interested parties during relevant thematic events such as the UNECE WGEMA6, JTF Ei7 and EEA meetings, and at the “Environment for Europe” Ministerial Conference.
-
National statistic agency
-
Experts from state agencies responsible for environmental data collection and management
-
Ministry of Environment
-
Agency on Hydrometeorology
-
National and regional environmental experts and consultative bodies.
-
The State of the Environment Report of Turkmenistan is available online on the website of the Ministry of Nature Protection;
-
This report includes chapter on air, biodiversity, wastes, climate change, water pollution, environmental management;
-
Recommendations to institutionalize the development and release of the state of the environment report on a regular basis are discussed with the Ministry of Nature Protection.
Project manager – Saniya Kartayeva