Take-off! UNEP helps to power an eye on the environment in Uzbekistan

Together with partners, UNEP has started to build capacity and transfer technology empowering Uzbekistan to map and assess environmental change.

UNEP and the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Ecology and Environmental Protection convened a Virtual National Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on 10 and 11 February 2021. The workshop was organized as part of the project ‘Capacity development and technology transfer to improve the generation and use of data and information in support of monitoring the environment in Central Asia’, which is being implemented with help from the Russian Federation. The event was supported by the project partners - Moscow State University and the Institute of Geography, Russian National Academy of Sciences. 

The workshop highlighted how Uzbekistan will gain access to a comprehensive classification of land cover and land use, mapping of its territories, including terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, as well as using information obtained from existing environmental monitoring networks at the national level. This information will inform national State of Environment Reports, sustainable management of natural resources, address transboundary environmental issues, as well as reporting to the Sustainable Development Goals  and major Multilateral Environmental Agreements.

The project will help enhance the use of relevant technologies and tools using remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems. It will also build institutional and human capacity to operate and maintain these tools and technologies through a dedicated training programme. A digital atlas of the environment will be developed  so that environmental change can be analysed and assessed in the key domains of water, land, and biodiversity. This will lead to the production of data flows, development of indicators, generation of statistics and production of pilot water and land accounts.

Part of the workshop focused on national stocktaking and the identification of national priorities. This will allow the project to accommodate national specificities into the activities that will be carried out and to contribute towards data collection and the establishment of an environmental baseline for Uzbekistan. The workshop also discussed the broad roadmap for the project, key activities and next steps.