GRID in Ukraine
The Ministry of Environmental Protection and Nuclear Safety of Ukraine (MEPNS) has from the beginning of its existence collaborated with UNEP on a wide range of regional, national and global ecological problems. The area of ecological informatization has so far given the most fruitful results of this cooperation. For example, UNEP/GRID-Arendal (Norway) and its Swedish branch in Uppsala have rendered assistance to MEPNS for the preparation of Ukraine`s first State environment reports on the Internet, and a set of special reports on different environmental problems (monitoring, biodiversity and others). These reports are widely disseminated within and outside Ukraine and provide a great number of users with vital information about the State of the Environment in Ukraine. High appreciation was also given to the SoE reports published on CD-ROM for the Aarhus conference in 1998. UNEP has supported the training of Ukrainian specialists to work with environmental information and has also be supportive in organizing the first all-Ukrainian seminar on environmental information systems. Ukraine has signed the ‘Aarhus Convention’ on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters: this now calls for action by our Ministry to disseminate environmental information more widely. This, together with the necessity to use environmental information for different environmental management tasks has inspired us to establish and develop a GRID-Centre in Kiev within the Division of Information Technologies of State Environmental Monitoring Department of MEPNS. The designated GRID-Centre will allow MEPNS to solve the following four tasks : 1.Sub-Regional level (regions -oblast, towns).
2.National level (Ukraine).
3.Regional level (Europe, Black Sea, Central-Europe).
4.Global level (UNEP, international environmental conventions).
The establishment of GRID-Kiev will effectively contribute to improve environmental information management both for to Ukraine and for the World community. So, the creation of GRID-Kiev satisfies both the Ukrainian interests and interests of all international environmental organizations. |