Last July 18-22 we held our latest ARIES for SEEA training in Kigali, Rwanda with the collaboration of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the UN Environmental programme (UNEP) and the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR).
The training was addressed to the representatives of the states members from the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa (GDSA), a commitment to implement all conventions and declarations that promote sustainable development in the signed countries. The goal was to train them on how to use the ARIES for SEEA Explorer to facilitate ecosystem accounting across Africa and push the incorporation of natural capital’s value in public and private policies and decision-making.
Natural Capital Accounting expert Alessio Bulckaen, lead investigator Ferdinando Villa and head developer Enrico Girotto were the ones in charge to teach the full potential of the ARIES for SEEA Explorer on the 5-day course. Around 18 assistants thoroughly examined ARIES for SEEA and learnt all the modeling components, including interpretation, visualization, and download of the various results. They also integrated local data in the system, so that the results produced by countries can be based on better local dataset, in case a country has this information/data available.
The training follows what was established in the interoperability strategy for the next generation of SEEA accounting which serves as an introduction to shared semantics, the artificial intelligence engine that can make human knowledge interoperable at a large scale to address complex social-ecological issues – and the underpin of ARIES.
We thank all the collaborating members for making this training possible and we are already looking forward to the next training in Philipines at the end of september!
