Working Group 1 Policy, Governance and Institutional Networking

Will focus on policy, governance, institutional arrangement and other high-level issues that are involved in the development and sustainment of any environmental information federation.

This will include the discussion of alternative approaches to federation governance, the policies that encourage and channel information sharing and collaboration across traditional sector based boundaries, as well as the policies and financing mechanisms that will encourage and support environmental federations and the use of such information sharing infrastructure for preparing integrated environmental assessment necessary for positive social, economic and physical development, and environmental protection.

Potential themes to be addressed by this Working Group include but are not limited to the following:

• Use of environmental information networks and infrastructure for decisions and actions to address key global environmental issues (e.g. climate change)
• Network Governance, Institutional Cooperation and Reporting Structures
• Cross-border acquisition and sharing of data
• Planning and Performance Management frameworks
• Financing arrangements
• Current networking weaknesses and gaps
• Functions, structure and architecture of a multi-disciplinary global environmental information network from national, sub-regional, regional, to global, which includes data and information from authoritative (governmental) and scientific sources as well as from local/lay/traditional knowledge and citizen science;
• Role of principles from e-commerce in data supply chains and value chains of data processing, analysis and modeling
• Indigenous water and biota rights, Native Title holders and local knowledge in the data and information pathways

Group Members

Co-chairs

Ivar A. Baste, Consultant/Senior Advisor to United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director
, World Resources Institute (WRI)

Members

Barbara Clark, European Environment Agency (EEA)
Ahmed Abdelrehim, Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE)
Yonglong Lu, Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE); Chinese Academy of Sciences
Daniel Magraw, Centre for International Environmental Law
Magdolna Toth Nagy, The Regional Environment Centre for Central and Eastern Europe (REC)
Alex de Sherbinin, CIESIN, The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Somrudee Nicro, Thailand Environment Institute
Fernando Ramos, Brazil National Institute for Space Research
Irene Lungu, Environment Council of Zambia
Csaba Kiss, Environmental Management and Law Association
Keith Nichols, Organization of Eastern Caribbean States
Bruce McCormack, European Umbrella Organization for Geographic Information (EUROGI)
Michael Williams, Group on Earth Observations (GEO)
Fernando Echavarria, Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science, U.S. Department of State
Paula Martins, Article 19

A White paper demonstrating the key issues, challenges, opportunities and way forward produced by the Policy, Governance and Institutional Networking Working Group can be accessed below: