The Environmental Protection Agency of Liberia (EPA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have built a platform to hold all environmental data and information aim at enhancing Liberia’s development processes and have begun training information technology specialists from line government ministries and agencies about the system.
The Environmental Knowledge Management System (EKMS), which is yet to be launched is a multi-year, cross-sectoral engagement that supports collaboration among Government staff, research centers, think tanks, practitioners, and private firms in tackling global environmental challenges.
It was built under the Cross-Cutting Capacity Development (CCCD) Project which seeks to enable Liberia make better decisions to meet and sustain global environmental obligations and strengthens a targeted set of national capacities to deliver and sustain global environmental outcomes within the framework of sustainable development priorities.
However, the EPA and UNDP on Monday, 18 November 2019 began a five day ‘learning-by-doing training’ in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County to use the EKMS, to demonstrate its value at improving a more holistic and resilient construct of the selected sectoral plan in keeping with Rio Convention obligations, is among many others expected to provide understanding on what environmental knowledge is and how to validate data information and knowledge and as well increased institutions benefits with an effective knowledge management strategy.
The training would also focus on the typology of information and knowledge, identification of information and knowledge needs, and the acquisition, discovery, storage, organization, sharing, use and application of information in the organizational context in digital environment.
Aaron Wesseh, Head of the CCCD Project said the project is in line with the GEF-6 CCCD strategy objectives 1, 3, and 5 which call for countries to integrate global environmental needs into management information systems and monitoring, integrate Multilateral Environmental Agreements provisions into national policy, legislative and regulatory frameworks and update National Capacity Self-Assessment respectively.
Wesseh told the opening of the training that the project will help Liberia to make better decisions to meet and sustain global environmental obligations including biodiversity, climate change, and desertification.
According to him, Liberia must have the capacity to coordinate efforts, as well as best practices for integrating global environmental priorities into planning, decision-making, and reporting processes.
The CCCD Project, Mr. Wesseh noted is been carried out via four linked components as means to achieve the goal and objective including the development of an integrated environmental knowledge management system (EKMS), enhancement of institutional and technical capacities for mainstreaming, develop, and utilize policies and or legislative frameworks for effective implementations f the three RIO Conventions.
Dr. Kolleh Bangura, Chief Technical Adviser to the CCCD Project welcomed participants drawn from institutions involved with natural resource management and said the project is being sponsored by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
He lauded the CCCD Project Manager and the consultant for making the construction of the platform successful.
Dr. Bangura hopes that the IT Specialists brought environmental data from their institutions to be loaded to the platform and stressed the need to have all environmental data in one place.
Speaking on behalf of EPA Deputy Director, Randall M. Dobayou, Tennema Coleman of Intersectorial thanked the participants and called on them to remain focus during the five-day.