MEXICO’S NATIONAL SYSTEM OF ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
Salvador Sánchez-Colón
Arturo Flores-Martínez,
Dirección General de Estadística e Información Ambiental,
Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales,
14210 México, D.F.
MÉXICO
Mexico’s Environmental Law mandates the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources to develop a National System of Environmental and Natural Resources Information. This system should compile, administer, and disseminate the country’s environmental information and be available for public access.
The system is being constructed as an extensive, fully computerized, distributed, remotely accessible, database network containing the relevant geographic, statistical and documental data from the data-acquiring agencies of the country.
Four major components of the system have been defined and are currently under development:
The National Compendium of Environmental Data. A thorough compilation of relevant statistical data generated/collected by federal agencies, organized into four chapters: Society, economy, environment, and management. The latest edition was published, in the WWW and as a CD-ROM, in December, 2003. The whole data set is currently being incorporated into a relational, remotely accessible, database aimed to become the Statistical Database of the National System of Environmental Information.
The Geographical Database of the National System of Environmental Information. A database organized along the Open GIS Consortium (OGC)’s guidelines and containing cartographical information produced by the agencies of the Ministry of the Environment. The Geo-Database currently harbours data from over 200 digital charts and can be accessed through the Intranet by means of GIS clients compliant with the OGC guidelines. An Internet Map Service has been set up to make the public portion of the Geo-Database accessible through the WWW. A Metadata Nodum was built and registered before the Federal Geographic Data Committee; it can be searched through by geographic gateways available in the Internet.
The National System of Environmental Indicators. An organizing framework designed by the Ministry of the Environment for integrating/coordinating the various initiatives currently being carried out for designing and calculating environmental indicators both, at the national and regional levels. The system is organized around the OECD’s Pressure-State-Response scheme and comprises four main subsystems: Core set of environmental indicators, Sectoral indicators, State and region-wide indicators, and Country-wide indicators (e.g. OECD’s Core set of environmental indicators). The indicators are being published in the WWW page of the Ministry of the Environment.
State of the Environment Report. A biennial synthetic report on the state of the environment and natural resources, the main efforts carried out to protect the environment and improve the management and conservation of natural resources, and the trends that these have followed over the last years. The report is organized into eight chapters: Population, Land use and vegetation, Soils, Water, Air, Biodiversity, Wildlife management, and Ecological planning instruments. The latest edition was published in book form, in the WWW and as a CD-ROM, in December, 2003.
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