THE Department of the Environment (DoE), under the Ministry of the Presidency, is looking to mainstream the local environmental sector by establishing a database which will assimilate information.

This was disclosed by Project manager of Rio Conventions Mainstreaming project at the DoE, Michelle Klass in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle recently. At the time, she was speaking on the department’s efforts towards strengthening technical capacities to mainstream and monitor the implementation of the Rio Convention through policy coordination.

Guyana signed onto the United Nations (UN) Rio Convention, which encompasses the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These are international environmental agendas Guyana has pledged to initiate by 2020.

According to Klass, “We have started to achieve some of our expected outcomes.” She explained that under the convention, Guyana has quite a few obligations which guide the objectives of the mainstreaming project she is responsible for. “A major output of this project is the establishment of an Environmental Information Monitoring and Management System (EIMMS),” she highlighted, and went on to explain that this is a system that will network existing databases in the environmental sector and reconcile their content.

In a nutshell, she explained that what the DoE is doing is firstly, is setting up a national spatial database system where it will try to “harmonise” environmental data for the country. Though this seems like an easy enough task, Klass posited: “This is a very ambitious project we have set out to do,” and added that there are some negotiations that need to be had with some of the agencies before the release of information, because of their privacy policies.

She nevertheless said, “But once we have that system in place – and of course we have all the data from the agencies, we can make that data accessible to the public so that they can use the information to their benefit.”

The data will be garnered in phases and she said, “It’s a living database that will be updated whenever new things such as new innovations or new projects occur.” So, at all times there will be up-to-date information on the environmental sector for public consumption. Aside from public consumption, the project manager also shared: “I believe it is going to be very useful for environmental agencies because we have to meet certain obligations on the Rio Conventions [and] we have to report on those conventions to the international bodies so that database will help us to in achieving those conventions.”

Added to this, the department has also begun working out the protocols needed for the sharing of data through the EIMMS. To set this data sharing in motion, a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) has been developed for the environmental agencies and Klass disclosed that the department is currently in the negotiation phase with the agencies. A government-based website found at: doe.gov.gy has already been completed and it will be linked to the EIMMS also. The site is currently being monitored to track how many users peruse the site and it is a developing platform where the work of the DoE, its partner agencies and projects will be published.