From 5 to 8 October 2026, the Centre for Environment and Development for the Arab Region and Europe (CEDARE) organized an intensive workshop in Gaborone, bringing together national experts from Botswana’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism, Statistics Botswana, and relevant national institutions. The workshop focused on reviewing and validating the national environmental indicator list and examining indicator selection criteria, alongside specialized training on the use of the Botswana Environmental Information System (BEIS), developed by CEDARE.
CEDARE’s contribution focused on strengthening the technical and institutional foundations of environmental information management. This included supporting the validation of indicators against national priorities and monitoring and reporting requirements, reviewing the clarity of indicator definitions and measurement methodologies, assessing data availability and gaps, and clarifying institutional responsibilities for data provision, verification and updates.
The support strengthened the operational capacity of the Department of Environmental Protection and participating institutions to manage the lifecycle of environmental and Sustainable Development Goal indicator data within the system, generate analytical outputs and data-gap reports, and use AI-assisted functionality. It also covered technical platform administration, user management, and access and publication controls.
CEDARE also supported the application of Integrated Environmental Assessment and the Drivers–Pressures–State–Impacts–Responses (DPSIR) framework, linking indicators to environmental issue analysis and policy priorities. The training covered workflows for State of the Environment reporting, including thematic report architecture, author and reviewer assignments, data integration, and consolidation of report content.
At the institutional level, CEDARE supported the development of data governance and coordination arrangements through the Botswana National Environmental Information Network (BNEIN). This included clarifying the roles of data-producing institutions and responsibilities for verification, approval and publication, alongside supporting the development of data compilation and exchange protocols and institutional data-sharing agreements.
Complementing this support, CEDARE supplied laptop computers to the Ministry’s Department of Environmental Protection as ICT equipment to strengthen the system’s operational readiness and support sustained data management and updates, with particular emphasis on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial data.
These activities were undertaken in cooperation with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), under the project “Building Core Capacity for the Implementation, Monitoring and Reporting of Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and Relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Botswana.” The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) through its Cross-Cutting Capacity Development (CCCD) programme, supporting evidence-based environmental planning and policymaking.
