Environmental Monitoring

Forests, land, and water resources and the ecosystem services they provide are a major driver of economic development in the GMS. Keeping track of the distribution and condition of this ‘natural capital’ is essential for sustainable development planning.

With support from development partners and programs including CEP, GMS countries are making progress in enhancing their development planning systems and using latest environmental tools and processes such as strategic environmental assessments, environmental impact assessments, and integrated land use planning.

These efforts are an important step towards enabling informed decision-making and ultimately better and more balanced economic, social, and environmental results. However, the effectiveness of planning tools and processes rely heavily on the availability of quality environmental information, including baseline and trend data.

While many GMS countries are consistently gathering basic socioeconomic information, environmental data is often either not of the quality required to properly inform sector and area-based plans, or simply not available at all. Most of the GMS countries lack the capacity and resources to ensure meaningful, high quality environmental data is regularly gathered. And for the data compiled, it is often ‘hidden’ in static reports or simply not widely distributed.

CEP is working with the GMS governments and development partners to improve environmental monitoring capacity and data availability in the subregion by:

  • Establishing regional and national online environment information platforms to improve information sharing and collaboration between stakeholders.
  • Developing regional, national, transboundary biodiversity landscape and biodiversity corridor site indicator databases and maps through CEP’s own assessments (GIS mapping, statistical surveys) and by consolidating existing datasets.
  • Strengthening the capacity of ministries to more efficiently and effectively manage and disseminate environmental information.

Click here to read more about activities under this component.

 

 

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