Bolivia launches its first climate change monitoring system

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Plurinational System of Information and Integral Monitoring of Mother Earth and Climate Change (SMTCC) is an initiative of the Plurinational Authority of Mother Earth (APMT) whose implementation was endorsed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) through the GEF Amazon project.

This system will enable to determine if the country is making progress in climate change adaptation and mitigation towards compliance with the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) proposed by the country, explained the Ministry of Environment and Water in a Facebook post.

The information generated will also support the development of public policies and decision-making to benefit the country’s most vulnerable sectors to climate change, including indigenous peoples, women, youths and minors, according to the same source.

It will also help promote a “framework of transparency at international level,” added  Minister of the Environment Juan Santos, who took part in the system’s presentation in La Paz, also attended by UNDP’s deputy resident representative in Bolivia Dennis Funes.

Funes stressed the importance of the implementation of the SMTCC as a key step forward for the Bolivian state in the monitoring of its environmental policies, in addition to opening up possibilities of access to new sources of international funding for these areas, according to a UNDP press release.

“I am very happy that it has been possible to reestablish this system that, in addition to assisting public management and planning, will allow us to access new international resources that work with issues such as biodiversity or climate change,” he said.

The system is a technical data resource on “climate change, life systems, environmental functions, ancestral knowledge under a data management model that is permanently updated and is the first official information resource on the subject,” the UNDP said in the statement.

The information generated will be of public use, accessible to Bolivian government officials and technicians, private institutions, researchers, cooperation agencies and other interested users, the note adds.

The UNDP, the APMT and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are launching a project named GEF Amazon that promotes the involvement of indigenous communities in safeguarding the forests in the four Indigenous Territories of the Bolivian Amazon, it adds.