The EEA participated at the Regional Conference on Environmental Data held on 8 May back-to-back with the 21^st session of the Working Group on Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. The conference was organised under the United Nations Development Account Project on Improved environmental monitoring and assessment in support of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in South-Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus.

The main objectives were closely linked to the activities under the ENI SEIS II East project, namely:

• To strengthen capacities of national environmental authorities and statistical agencies to collect, produce data in accordance with SEIS
• To improve accessibility and use of regularly updated and high quality environmental indicators, within the framework of SEIS, to respond to international indicator based reporting obligations, including monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

During the regional conference the following aspects were addressed: environmental data use, accessibility and harmonisation, measuring progress towards achieving the environmental dimension of the Sustainable Development Goals, moving from data production to action illustrated by country examples (poster session), as well as advancing the Sustainable Development Goals through the use of integrated data and state of the environment reporting. Under the latter part, the EEA expert Galina Georgieva delivered a presentation on ‘Using State-of-the-Environment-Reporting to address the Sustainable Development Goals’.

Further information, presentation and country posters available here