KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 19

National biodiversity experts and officials from Bhutan, China, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Cambodia have gathered in Kathmandu to explore new ways to monitor and report on the state of nature in their countries.

The meeting comes as countries grapple with the additional reporting burden that has accompanied the proliferation in nature-related agreements and targets over the last decades, as the pressure to halt and reverse precipitous declines in nature around the world mounts.

At the event, joint organizers the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP), and the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), gave key regional stakeholders the opportunity to test new tools and approaches to streamline, improve the accuracy and reduce the burden of reporting.

The new, pro-bono, private and secure national data reporting tool (DaRT), developed by UNEP and funded by the government of Switzerland and the European Union, can organize, store, and share the data needed for all current conventions and targets. The organizers have also sought to increase knowledge of reporting methods, with a focus on cross-ministerial and interdisciplinary cooperation.

Hari Bahadur KC, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, Government of Nepal, strongly endorsed the initiative saying: 'This will help us organise and share information for the various conventions and in systematic development of institutional knowledge for data generation and reporting.'

Diane Klaimi, UNEP's DaRT team leader, said: 'Our hope is that DaRT will significantly alleviate the burden of reporting many governments face in this critical decade for nature, and ultimately ensure more government resources continue to flow to the crucial national and local policies and strategies to halt and reverse nature loss.'

The National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) aligned with the global biodiversity goals are a key document that nations are expected to deliver at next month's 16th UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of Parties. DaRT can facilitate the integration of other important global biodiversity related multilateral environmental agreements, running from the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, Convention on Migratory Species, to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and the World Heritage Convention.

W.K. Rathnadeera, Senior Programme Officer of SACEP, said: 'SACEP welcomes this innovative tool, which we believe has the potential to significantly reduce the human and financial resources our member countries spend on reporting.'