The Caucasus Nature Foundation, together with the Ministry of Environment, initiated a two-day expert seminar on the topic "Development of a 10-year project for systematic monitoring of biodiversity in Armenia.
The seminar was attended by Deputy Minister of Environment Aram Meymaryan, Biodiversity Adviser Tatiana Rose, Executive Director of the Caucasus Nature Foundation Tobiasi Munchmeier, Director of the Caucasus Nature Foundation in Armenia Arman Vermishyan, Director of the Armenian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature Karen Manvelyan, heads of professional departments of the Ministry, representatives of government departments and international organizations.
With an introductory speech Deputy Minister of Environment Aram Meymaryan made a speech.
"Monitoring of biodiversity on the territory of the Republic of Armenia, including natural ecosystems, forests, landscape diversity, flora and fauna, natural heritage is necessary for the state and society to fully understand environmental protection, sustainable use of natural resources, environmental safety and sustainable development of the country, natural phenomena and processes, climate change and their consequences, and also to assess the state of environmental components and the harmful effects of innate and anthropogenic changes on them."
The Deputy Minister also touched upon the inferiority of the information system for monitoring biodiversity and biodiversity, noting that there is no coordinated and unified network for monitoring biodiversity and the low reliability of the results obtained.
Speeches and reports were delivered by the representative of the twining program "Enhanced protection and sustainable use of biodiversity in Armenia in accordance with European standards" Hindrich Klapek, biodiversity consultant Tatiana Rose and Director of the Armenian branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature Karen Manvelyan.
The principles of the monitoring system formation, criteria for determining the goal and the expected result were presented.
The seminar will last two days. Participants through group discussions and active questions and answers will form the main guidelines for which the monitoring project will be developed.
Speaking about the expected results, Deputy Minister Aram Meymaryan expressed hope that this Discussion and all further processes will contribute to the development of a long-term monitoring system, will help to clearly formulate the purpose and objectives of monitoring, identify the main beneficiaries and identify the end user and the purpose of using the data obtained as a result of monitoring.