The draft State of Environment (SoE) report for Papua New Guinea is being finalised through a validation consultation workshop with key national environment stakeholders under the leadership of the PNG Conservation and Environment Protection Authority (CEPA).
The workshop was organised by CEPA and supported through the GEF-Inform regional project. It was held at the Lamana Hotel in Port Moresby from 22 – 26 July, 2019.
The SoE report examines major drivers of change to the environment that emerge from global, regional and national factors. It evaluates the main environmental pressures created by these drivers and examines their environmental impact.
The report also gives recommendations to ensure economic development is environmentally sustainable.
It will serve as a reference to guide national development efforts and to improve livelihoods, while the information in the SoE will help improve decision-making on the environment and in the allocation of resources to environmental protection.
The report has eight thematic areas: culture and heritage, environmental monitoring and governance, atmosphere and climate, coastal and marine, biodiversity, built environment, freshwater resources, and land. Each thematic area includes a range of environment indicators to describe it.
Workshop participants were grouped into the SoE thematic areas corresponding to their expertise where they reviewed the draft environmental indicators. This included verifying the state and trend of each indicator, identifying additional datasets required and providing recommendations to improve management of the environment.
At the closing of the workshop CEPA Director, Mr. Maino Virobo, acknowledged the important contribution from the stakeholders in providing the data, graphs and maps, and validating interpretations on the state of PNG’s environment.
“The SoE Report will give an accurate reflection of the environment situation across the country, whether we’re doing well, not doing well, are we protecting the biodiversity, are we regulating the environment, this will be reflected in the report.”
“It’s not a national report, it’s a global report because once it is approved by the National Executive Council it becomes a global document, everybody can view it, and everybody will read it,” said Mr. Virobo.
Mr. Biatus Bito, the national SoE consultant will work towards incorporating input, feedback and comments from the thematic experts into a revised SoE draft for final revision before submission for official Government endorsement.
The regional GEF Inform project is funded from the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by UN Environment and executed by SPREP through the Environmental Monitoring and Governance Programme. The Inform project is helping set up national data portals in 14 Pacific island countries to house all environment related information for improved decision-making and reporting. Information available on the portal will contribute to the SoE process.
Technical assistance to the PNG SoE validation workshop was provided by SPREP Inform Project Officers Mr. Peter McDonald, Environment Monitoring and Reporting Specialist, and Mr. Tavita Su’a, Environmental Information Systems Developer and Analyst.
For more information on the State of Environment report, please contact Peter McDonald: [email protected].
For more information on the Inform project, please contact Project Manager, Mr. Paul Anderson: [email protected].
For more information on the PNG national environment portal, please visit their website: https://png-data.sprep.org/