A discussion with Pacific countries for ‘Inform Plus’ is underway, with the Regional Knowledge Sharing and Project Update regional workshop, providing one of the first opportunities to have a talanoa about it.
The Inform project was launched in 2017 to establish a Pacific Island network of national and regional data repositories and reporting tools to support the monitoring, evaluation, and analysis of environmental information, which supports environmental planning, forecasting and reporting requirements.
Inform Plus will be the second phase of the Inform project, which concludes in December 2022. It will build on and expand the work being carried out by the Inform project, and the project concept will be informed by project implementation and improved on through country input.
The virtual workshop was an opportunity for the participating countries of the Inform project to gain a better understanding on the current status of the development of ‘Inform Plus’, as well as an update of the project’s current outcomes and achievements.
A roundtable talanoa was held with country representatives including Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Palau, Republic of Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu, on how the project concept could be strengthened and improved.
Mr Jope Davetanivalu, Acting Director of the Environmental Monitoring and Governance programme SPREP, highlighted the importance of the countries’ feedback to the project team.
“The Inform team would like to hear from you on how we can progress the project to another level,” he said. “I would also like to share our appreciation for all the support you have provided to the team. Without you, there is no Inform project but we are witnessing lots of successful outcomes which we will be hearing about today.”
The workshop also highlighted key achievements of the GEF-UNEP Inform Project over this period with the development, access and availability to all 14 countries of the Pacific Environment Portal (PEP), an E-learning platform to upload, manage and use their countries’ environmental data, the launch of the standardised Environmental indicator guidebook to be used by Pacific island countries for their State of Environments Reports (SOE).
In addition to these, the Inform team have been working in conjunction with countries and partners to upgrade the Pacific Environmental Portal and having countries’ State of Environment reports as Interactive webpages. These will be launched before the end of 2021.
According to Inform project manager, Mr Paul Anderson, a steering committee meeting was recently held to discuss in further detail the development of the project’s second phase.
The ‘Inform Plus’ concept received good advice and input from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is the implementation agency for Inform, and Samoa, one of the steering committee members.
The concept note was well received by member countries.
Mr Bryan Star, Director of the Department of Environment of Nauru highlighted “Nauru would like to support the Inform Plus project concept and find it applicable to our needs for better environment information and dissemination”.
The Inform Plus project will be implemented across 14 Pacific Island countries.
About the Inform Project
The Inform Project is funded by the Global Environment Facility, implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme and executed by SPREP. The project is setting up national environment data portals in 14 Pacific island countries including Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. The Inform project is based with SPREP’s Environmental Monitoring and Governance Programme.
For more information on the Inform project, please contact Mr Paul Anderson, Project Manager at [email protected].
For more information o the Inform Project, please visit the project website: https://sprep.org/inform.