The Pacific region is often characterized with data paucity which is perpetuated by the lack of individual, systemic and institutional capacity among national Governments to properly collect, analyze and store data and information for policy-making. For national EIA regulators, their abilities to effectively regulate for sustainable development are restricted to the limited information (of lack thereof) at their disposal – hampering reviews of EIA reports and monitoring for compliance activities. The recent evaluation findings of the first round of regional trainings carried out between November to December 2020 revealed a significant number of participants requested GIS and RS as a training topic for the second round of training. This may point to a desire to learn about the utility value of applying GIS and RS in EIA reviews or simply to use it to organize and store data collected from EIA studies and office field studies associated with monitoring of EIA; culminating in the development of an internal repository database to inform future reviews and decision making by the EIA regulator.
This module provides an introductory level training on the use of remote sensing and geographical information system as a software tool for organizing geographical data to gain actionable intelligence for effective EIA decision making.