Increasing concern has been expressed over the burden being placed on national governments to provide information for international programmes.

Biodiversity reporting follows a similar trend. There are a growing number of international and regional organisations in need of structured, aggregated and easily accessible biodiversity information from the national level. In addition, a number of international biodiversity programmes also request more general environmental and socio-economic information. National authorities in charge of such information regularly find themselves under an increasing pressure of diverse and uncoordinated requests. Due to funding-related and structural reasons, the processing of such requests is often poorly co-ordinated within a country. This results in duplication of effort and lack of efficiency of individual capacity building initiatives implemented by bilateral and multilateral donors.

This report on Streamlining and Harmonisation of Biodiversity Information and Reporting in the NIS has been commissioned by UNEP's Regional Office for Europe as part of their contribution to implementation of the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy. In particular, this work supports implementation of Action 0.2 in the Action Plan 1996-2000 which aims to Assist introduction of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans [as required by the CBD] in all countries of Europe by the year 2000.

The objective of the report is to summaries the existing requirements, institutional setting and capacity development assistance of various international programmes with regard to the delivery of biodiversity information from the national level, as well as to make recommendations on how to streamline and harmonise the international programmes reporting policies in order to facilitate national biodiversity reporting and other reporting activities in the Newly Independent States. The report will serve as a background for a comprehensive proposal for the streamlining and harmonisation of national biodiversity reporting in the NIS.

Tags: biodiversity