Funafuti, Tuvalu, 12th February, 2019
Tuvalu will have improved capacity in environmental data management under the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Trade, Tourism, Environment, and Labour with the establishment this week of the national environmental data portal. Developed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) through the regional UN Environment implemented GEF funded Inform project executed by SPREP, the Tuvalu environment data portal will help address the on-going challenge of accessing available data and information to support environmental planning and decision making.
The development and hosting of the Tuvalu Environment Data Portal and associated capacity training were the main focus of a capacity building workshop held from the 7th -13th February, 2019, in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The workshop also launched the regional Inform project in Tuvalu.
The SPREP Inform Project Manager, Mr. Paul Anderson, said the Inform project will assist Pacific island countries enhance their national reporting capacity to the various multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs).
“The project will help address the lack of timely access to available information by those who need it, including local technical staff, governments, communities and citizens, for national and international reporting and planning, and most importantly, for sound and informed decision making. There is also the need for historical and current evidence of the status and trends of various environmental resources and drivers of environmental change.”
The workshop conducted a hands-on training to upload, store and share relevant data and reports to the national portal. The SPREP team will also hold discussions on the core set of environmental indicators for use in environmental reporting.
Mr. Soseala Tinilau, Director of the Department of Environment acknowledged SPREP for their continuous support highlighting the environment. He also thanked representatives from other government ministries for accepting their invitation to participate at the inception workshop of the Inform project.
“The Government of Tuvalu acknowledges the implementation of this initiative especially the establishment of the Pacific islands network of national and regional data repositories and reporting tools to support monitoring, reporting, and evaluation of environmental information.
“Modernised data is important for driving and bringing about informed decision-making. This is also the reason why the Department of Environment through the Ridge 2 Reef (R2R) project decided to establish an environmental database to manage and consolidate data for reporting purposes to all MEAs that Tuvalu has ratified and party to,” said Mr. Tinilau.
He told the participants that the Inform project is very useful in effectively managing, share and store data environmental data to facilitate preparing national reports and reporting to international commitments such as the SDGs.
Ms. Easter Galuvao, SPREP Environmental Monitoring and Governance Programme Director said, “SPREP continues to play a lead role in assisting countries to develop and strengthen capacity on environmental governance, policy and planning, monitoring and reporting.”
“Accessing environmental data through the national portal will help in decision-making, facilitate preparing reports on the national state of the environment, reporting to the Multi-lateral Environment Agreements (MEAs), the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as in providing environmental input to support national planning processes.”.
The four-year regional Inform project (2017-2021) is funded through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by UN Environment. It is executed by SPREP in the 14 Pacific island countries of the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.
For more information on the Inform Project, contact Mr. Paul Anderson, Inform Project Manager on email: [email protected].
To learn more about the Inform project, please visit http://www.sprep.org/inform/home