About CEPIS

Background and Purpose

The United Nations Environment Programme has been mandated through various decisions of its Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum to encourage countries to share environmental data and information. This is an important part of UNEP’s overall mandate to keep the world environmental situation under review.

The Country Environmental Profile Information System is a global partnership and capacity building initiative that aims to identify, classify, organize and provide electronic access to environmental data and information from a country perspective.

The profiles share a common structure and navigation system in order to provide the user with a good overview of the environmental situation of each country. The content of each profile focuses on state-of-the-environment reporting, indicators and related data and information resources across relevant thematic areas, complemented by information on environmental governance, capacity building projects, and environmental management.

An open source content management system called Plone (www.plone.org) is being used to manage the country profiles.

Content

The content of each profile is classified and grouped under eight main menu items that open up into various sub-menus as appropriate to provide a more logical arrangement of the content.

The eight menu items are as follows:

1. General Information

The aim is to provide a synopsis of the geographic landscape, political system, socio-economic situation and natural resources of the country. The information provided is essentially basic facts and figures about the country that serve as a backdrop for more specific environmental data and information that is available elsewhere in the country’s profile.

2. Environmental Governance

The main aim is to provide an overview of international and national law and policy adopted by governments; identify and highlight the roles of environmental institutions including governmental and non-governmental actors (environmental groups) and describe role and activities of the country in the international environmental arena.

3. State of the Environment

The aim is to provide a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the environment of each country. At the national level, ministries of environment and environmental protection agencies are generally mandated to keep the national environmental situation under review. This involves having a state-of-the-environment reporting framework in place to regularize national state of the environment reporting and report on environmental trends using indicators and other tools.

4. Themes

The aim is to provide the specialist user with a wide range of environmental information relevant to the thematic area of interest, and pertaining to a particular country. The user will typically be an environmental scientist or specialist with expertise and interest in a particular area of the environment. The specialist may have a thematic focus in a particular area such as air, water, land, disasters, biodiversity and so on. Alternatively, the specialist may have a cross-cutting focus across many thematic areas but may specialize in law or policy-making, integrated assessment or environmental management.

5. Indicators

The aim is to present the user with information and data on a wide range of environmental indictors relevant to each country. Environmental indicators are measures of the state of and pressures on the environment. Their aim is to raise awareness of the environment and show progress towards sustainable development. They are powerful tools that serve many purposes, useful as tools for performance evaluation and public information. Indicators inform both the decision-maker and the general public about environmental trends over time.

6. Systems and Networks

The aim is to provide an overview of the various environmental information systems, monitoring systems, clearinghouses, networks and portals that operate within the country. In addition there may be regional or global initiatives in this broad area that have country level components. Their coverage may be thematic or cross-cutting.

7. Projects

This component of the country profile does not maintain a standard format across all countries.

• For developing countries and countries with economies in transition, it aims to provide information on environmental projects that are funded from both multilateral and bilateral funding sources.
• In the case of developed countries it highlights funding sources available from within that country and also points to recipient countries where the donor country has supported environmental projects.

8. Environmental Management

The aim is to provide broad-based information on environmental management which can be defined as effective and active measures taken for the protection, conservation and presentation of the environment, heritage and natural resources for which a government, organization or individual is responsible.

For more detailed information on the various menu items please consult the site index

Profile Management

The overall management of the system and provision of content is shared by UNEP, other international organizations that maintain systems with relevant country-specific content, and national environmental institutions, who are willing and able to provide appropriate information/data resources.

Some information is harvested from a select number of authoritative websites and databases, while the remainder is provided by national contributors. UNEP’s aim is that the relevant environmental institutions in each country will take an interest in contributing to specific areas of the country profile and eventually share ownership of it.

The following diagram shows the profile administration structure that UNEP is putting in place in cooperation with national and international contributors.

It is important that both UNEP and the national profile administrators receive feedback on the content and structure of the profiles. This will be taken into account in producing updated versions of the system. We hope that all relevant institutions worldwide will be engaged in the further development of the system and ensure that the environmental profile for each country is authoritative, relevant and updated on a timely basis. If you are willing and able to contribute to this important initiative please send an email to the relevant national profile administrators and copy the global administrator at UNEP.