The goal of the project to raise the scientific and technological capacity of the government institutions responsible for the environment in the countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to monitor, assess and sustainably manage their terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and natural resources, including those of a transboundary nature, by increasing their access to near real time remote sensed information. The project will provide a new instrument in a format of online digitized Environmental Atlases (Atlas of Changes in Central Asia — ACCA) to harmonize national statistics, and reporting to secretariats of UNCCD, UNFCCC, UNCBD, and SDGs (Water, Life on Land) according to international standards.
Project methodology
The goal of the project to raise the scientific and technological capacity of the government institutions responsible for the environment in the countries of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to monitor, assess and sustainably manage their terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and natural resources, including those of a transboundary nature, by increasing their access to near real time remote sensed information. The project will provide a new instrument in a format of online digitized Environmental Atlases (Atlas of Changes in Central Asia — ACCA) to harmonize national statistics, and reporting to secretariats of UNCCD, UNFCCC, UNCBD, and SDGs (Water, Life on Land) according to international standards.
The methodology of the project suggests that datasets derived from global and macro-regional observation and geospatial information will play the key role in a situation of scarcity or low reliability of national data sources. Global environmental data sources provide information obtained by unified method, such data makes possible to compare the situation in different regions and countries inside one region. Also, global data sources are regularly being updated that makes possible to identify temporal changes of the territory. Global datasets guide and improve national statistics by ensuring that the national data are satisfactorily accurate and spatially-explicit. On the other hand, global sources have to be validated on national and local spatial and statistical materials.
It is helpful to use the tiered approach for quantitative data: Data quality related to selected environmental themes and indicators is checked in terms of consistency and degree of validation on national and local spatial and statistical materials. We used a “tiered” approach analogous to that of the SDG guidance but modified according to conditions of low availability and reliability of environmental statistics in the target countries.
| Data quality tiers | Definition |
| Tier 1. (Low quality) | the presence of global/regional data sources that do not provide information on temporal dynamics and do not correspond with national estimations. |
| Tier 2. | the presence of global data that provide information on temporal dynamics but do not correspond with the national estimations. |
| Tier 3. | the presence of global/regional data sources that correspond with national estimations but do not provide information on temporal dynamics. |
| Tier 4. (High quality) | the presence of global/regional data sources that provide information on temporal dynamics and correspond with national estimations. |
At this first stage of the project we select indicators for measurement of a progress of the countries towards implementation of the SDGs and Rio-conventions. These indicators serve as priorities for thematic content of the electronic Atlases. All indicators had been approved at the first inception meeting at Dushanbe in December 2019 and two online meetings – on 10-11 February 2021 with Tashkent and on 27 May 2021 with Bishkek.
Besides, the Atlases should include some basic maps for example, relief, administrative units, biogeographic provinces, hydrological basins, demography, settlements, and infrastructure.
One of important tasks is analysis of difference in definitions of selected indicators established in international and national sources. In some cases the difference is intentionally established in the course of so called nationalizing of the SDGs.
Data gaps in national sources are recognized to be the most serious challenge for the implementation of the project. Many data, found in national sources, are incomplete or low confidence because of vague method applied for their mining. We tested several global datasets against national statistics and found a large discrepancy of global and national sources. At the same time, some different global data sources show a significant discrepancy in relation to the same indicators. It makes spatial validation of results of application of global informative resources particularly important for the project.
Concrete requirements and capacity gaps of the target groups addressed by this project include:
Environmental data and information gaps
There is a need to improve data availability to support monitoring and reporting on SDG goals, targets and indicators, as well as major MEAs such as the three Rio Conventions. These data flows, indicators and statistics would also support the development of water and land accounts and would support regular assessment processes such as state of environment reporting and environmental performance reviews.
Information technology gaps
Due to limited technical and financial capacity in the countries, this project will provide state of the art information technology systems (computers, local servers, software), as well as training, that would be required to achieve the objectives, outputs and the outcomes of the project.
Capacity gaps for monitoring, reporting and assessments
To support implementing national and international policy processes and frameworks – the countries require further development in capacities to use environmental information in regular assessment processes which can inform decision- and policy-makers, as well as progress towards the implementation of major MEAs such as the three Rio Conventions and the environmental dimension of the SDGs.