GRID in Ukraine

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).

	methodical assistance for creation of electronic environmental reports and make them accessible through the Internet- (in future it is intended to create the national environmental information system).
	methodical and technical assistance for introducing GIS and other modern information technologies, and the use of internationally compatible indicator sets (UNEP, CSD, OECD and EEA).

2.National level (Ukraine).

	regular preparation of environmental reports (SoE) on the Internet- according to internationally used standards and using harmonized indicator sets.
	creation of national environmental information system (GIS, databases, Internet-service).
	strengthening of Ministry’s information-technological capacities (Intranet).

3.Regional level (Europe, Black Sea, Central-Europe).

	preparation of information at up-to-date level.
	introduction of internationally used environmental indicator-sets.
	certification of Ukrainian sources of environmental information.
	participation in preparation of Pan-European environmental reports.

4.Global level (UNEP, international environmental conventions).

	creation, filling and maintenance of data metadatabases according to the UNEP and GRID standards.
	participation in preparation of world environmental reports.
	dissemination of UNEP information in Ukraine.

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.