18 November 2021, Apia – Information on the state of the environment in the Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands and Tonga has been made even more accessible to policy and decision makers, stakeholders and the general public, with the launch of their State of Environment interactive webpages.
The State of Environment (SOE) reports provide a ‘health check’ for the environment of a country. SOE reports can be used to strengthen the environmental sustainability of national development plans and policy decisions, and the SOE process can become an effective way for streamlining the monitoring and reporting requirements under Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs).
The SOE process is carried out by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme’s (SPREP) Environmental Monitoring and Governance programme, which is currently executing the Global Environment Facility-funded and United Nations Environment Programme-implemented Inform project.
SPREP Director General, Mr Kosi Latu, said, “The Inform project has supported and delivered several key targeted interventions over the last couple of years with the overall objective of supporting our Members in terms of environmental decisions in the region. One of these targeted interventions is the developing of the national SOE reports.”
He added that in 2020, SPREP Members developed and successfully endorsed SOE reports for five countries, as well as the State of Environment and Conservation (SOEC) report, which provides a snapshot into the health of the environment of the Pacific region.
According to Mr Latu, the interactive webpages function to promote awareness and the use of country SOE reports and to complement the great work done by countries and the Inform project on various SOE reports by making them easily accessible and available on demand on any device.
Pacific Island countries have been developing State of Environment reports since the early 1990s. However, these reports usually come in the form of printed reports consisting of 200 pages which cannot be easily accessed by those who work off-site and outside of their offices.
Mr Paul Anderson, Inform Project Manager, said, “Working with our national counterparts, the experts and content creators, we have taken the most relevant messages key findings high points and areas that need improvement and boiled them down into shorter texts and images and most importantly interactive graphics, maps and graphs to create these accessible interactive SOE reports."
"A lot of things are online now and a lot of the uses for the information in the SOEs happen outside the office. It’s handy to have the information you need on your mobile phone or computer and not have to look through a paper document or PDF," he added.
Ms Debra Kereseka, Chief Environment Officer of Solomon Islands provided her feedback during the launch of how much easier it is to use and find information in their SOE through the interactive webpage.
The Solomon Islands SOE report was published in 2019 after going through the process of updating its SOE with support from the Inform project.
“The SOE is a big report with a lot of information, but having it summarised in the webpage helps decision makers, relevant stakeholders and partners to access and gain information in a timely manner. It saves time and effort to search for key information and it is easy to access and easy to understand.”
The challenges of data sharing in FSM were shared by Mr Snyther Biza, who referred to the development and launching of their national SOE interactive webpage as a milestone in the process of developing data for use in his country as a nation and for regional and international reporting requirements.
“In FSM we have levels of government – local, state and national. Data sharing in FSM is a challenge through these three levels of government. That’s why when we first went through the process of developing our SOE, it took us almost a year to get the text to SPREP who assisted us in completing that report. Now with the interactive webpage, the SOE report is now accessible to all the states and to all levels right down to communities and schools,” Mr Biza said.
Mr Siosiua Latu of Tonga provided a snapshot of some of the key environmental indicators from his country, which can now be easily accessed through the Tonga SOE interactive webpage. He, along with Ms Kereseka and Mr Biza, expressed their gratitude to the Inform project team and SPREP for their assistance and support in developing their interactive webpages.
For more information, please contact Mr Paul Anderson, Inform Project Manager, at [email protected].