On 7thAugust 2018, the Department of Sustainable Development launched Saint Lucia’s National Environmental Information System (NEIS). This system is one of the deliverables of the ‘Increasing Saint Lucia’s Capacity to Monitor MEA Implementation and Sustainable Development’ project funded by the Global Environment Facility.

Saint Lucia has signed on to several international or multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) whereby Saint Lucia agrees to join global efforts in dealing with environmental issues by among other things, taking action locally and supporting the implementation of relevant international laws to protect the environment.  As it relates to the abovementioned project, the three MEAs of particular interest are, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Under these agreements, Saint Lucia is required to report its progress and/or actions taken towards dealing with pertinent environment issues.

The NEIS is a web-based platform which provides the public and authorized users with access to information on these MEA indicators through the use of raw data from the Common Data Storage Facility (CDSF). The CDSF is an electronic storage space for documents of various formats, allowing authorized users to search reports using datasets that have been entered or documents using a combination of date, users, tags and catalogues.

The NEIS can be accessed via the link: https://www.neis.govt.lc/.

However, the NEIS will be most useful to civil society and technical persons if the relevant data and documents are uploaded for use. The Saint Lucia National Trust is therefore inviting Saint Lucia’s civil society to tell us what data would be most useful to your community and livelihood. What kind of information about climate change in Saint Lucia would you like to know about? What would you like to know about Saint Lucia’s biodiversity and the status of land in Saint Lucia? Would you like to be a part of protecting particular species of plants or animals? Would you like to know about the areas in Saint Lucia where land is degraded? Do you belong to a group or organisation involved in environmental protection, what kind of information would help your group improve its work? Does your organisation collect environmental data that can be useful to others? What information presently on the NEIS are you most interested in and would like to see kept up to date? These are just a few questions for consideration.

We encourage you to visit the NEIS and look forward to hearing from you. Please send us an email about your information requests and areas of interest at naturalheritage@slunatrust.org.

Making Saint Lucia’s National Environmental Information System (NEIS) work for you!
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