Genesis of Environment
Information Management
in Uganda
The formative stages amounts of data involved, but also in recognition of the
The Government of Uganda recognised and institutional- fact that storing of data belonging to other institutions
ised the concept of access to environmental information sowed seeds of ‘discord’.
well ahead of the Rio Summit of 1992. Government de-
veloped a project to establish an Environment Informa- The potential conflict associated with being a repository
tion Centre with support from the United Nations Envi- of data that belongs to other institutions was not the
ronment Programme (UNEP) as early as 1987. The idea only challenge that faced the infant NEIC. A number
arose from the need for an up-to-date database that could of institutions including the then Department of Statis-
provide environmental information on demand so as to tics and the Department of Surveys and Mapping con-
improve natural resources management and conserva- tested NEIC’s mandate to generate statistics and maps
tion. In 1989, a Users’ Needs Assessment was undertak- respectively. Both institutions claimed the sole mandate
en to specify information and capacity building needs to to generate the two outputs under contest. The above
that end. During the same year, the government with the challenges were however, amicably resolved by the ad-
assistance of UNEP and the World Bank Technical Divi- mission of both institutions to actively and jointly par-
sion, Africa Region (AFTEN), established an information ticipate in an Environment Information Network (EIN)
centre – the National Environment Information Centre with NEIC.
(NEIC) – within the Ministry of Environment Protection.
This was later formalized through a cabinet decision in Moving from vagueness to clarity
August 1990 (NEMA 2007). In view of the initial challenges, and over time, NEIC
evolved into an organisation that focussed more on the
The mandate of the centre was to provide environmental production, use and dissemination of re-packaged in-
information to support decision making for development formation. The production of four pilot District Envi-
by collaborating with sector institutions. It would do so ronment Profiles between 1991 and 1993 marked the
through the establishment of environment information beginning of this process. These were for the districts
systems (EIS) described in Box 1. of Kampala, Iganga, Mbale and Rakai. The NEIC later
played a key role in providing information support to
The NEIC initially focused on the establishment of a the National Environment Action Plan (NEAP) proc-
dedicated Geographical Information System (GIS) or ess in 1992. The 1994 National State of the Environ-
computerised mapping unit to work with secondary ment (SOE) report was a major information output of
information to produce tailored products to answer the NEAP process. This report, together with the Na-
contemporary environmental management questions. tional Environment Management Policy published in
The centre tried to collect and store all available data in- the same year, was instrumental in the passing of the
house. This effort was partly abandoned due to the huge framework law on the environment in 1995 (National
Environment Act Cap 153). Indeed the 1994 SOE was
constantly referred to by Ugandan legislators as the law
Box 1. What is an EIS?
was being debated. It has also had other impacts within
the wider public (see Box 2).
An EIS can be conceptualized as an integrated information
system within an organizational entity which employs a va-
riety of information technologies and analogue strategies
The NEIC remained a small and technically constrained
to capture, integrate and provide environment information
unit throughout the tenure of the NEAP process. This
resources to users. It can be viewed as an intermediary be-
may have been due to several reasons which were iden-
tween the national or district level served and the various tified by the NEAP (MEP 1994). These included: inade-
other information systems or people responsible for deliv- quate institutional mechanisms for the dissemination of
ering and using this information (Kling 2000). The compo-
information between the data source and potential users;
nents of an EIS – the information resources, the hardware
limitations with regard to availability, quality, coherence,
and software, the natural resources and the people interact
standardization and accessibility of data; and lack of a le-
with the environment by responding to various information
gal framework on access to information, particularly with
demands and providing support through various outputs.
regard to confidential or proprietary information. The
Information from an EIS could be analyzed and presented in
a multi-media environment. This adaptability is what makes
NEAP process thus made a number of recommendations
it suitable for use at all levels of government.
to improve and build on the capacity already developed
within NEIC. This included, among others, the sugges-
6 Best Practices in Environmental Information Management in Africa
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