Monitoring: Administration of environmental monitoring in Denmark has been reorganized

The Ministry of Environment and Energy has reassigned overall responsibility for many environmental and nature monitoring activities from its three Agencies to its research institutions.

The National Environmental Research Institute (NERI) – the research institution with the widest sphere of activity – has been assigned responsibility for the majority of the tasks, although some have been assigned to the Danish Forest and Landscape Research Institute.

The main grounds for the reorganization were a desire to simplify the working procedures within the Ministry. The research institutions have long been responsible for the practical side of much of the monitoring work, among other things in collaboration with the county authorities. They have built up considerable expertise concerning the strengths and weaknesses and cost of various monitoring strategies and methods. By gathering both the national and international work in the research institutions, the Ministry hopes to be able to improve the efficiency of the work and reap the benefits of rationalization.

This is necessary due to the increasing environmental monitoring workload, among other things resulting from Denmark’s increasing accession to international agreements committing the country to monitor and report on the state of the issues in question.

It is now NERI’s responsibility to prepare proposals for overall prioritization of the monitoring activities and coordinate the work within the Ministry. Thereafter NERI has to ensure that the decisions are implemented in operational monitoring programmes within the designated financial framework.

NERI is gathering the new responsibilities in a newly established monitoring co-ordination section based at NERI’s Silkeborg premises. Senior researcher Lars Moeslund Svendsen heads the new section.

Further information: Deputy Director General Torben Moth Iversen, National Environmental Research Institute. Phone: +45 8920 1400. E-mail: tmi@dmu.dk

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