Environmental monitoring is a tool to assess environmental conditions and trends, support policy development and its implementation, and develop information for reporting to national policymakers, international forums and the public.

Over the past decade, only a few countries of Europe and Central Asia have been able to maintain existing monitoring activities. The monitoring of urban air pollution — an important human health risk — is poor in many cities of the subregion. Solid and hazardous waste monitoring is weak and industrial emissions are also not well monitored, reducing the effectiveness of policy instruments such as emissions charges and fines. Monitoring of transboundary air pollution also needs strengthening. Moreover, many European and Central Asian countries lack uniform national methodologies across different monitoring areas, and their classification systems are often incompatible with international standards.

At the Fifth Environment for Europe Conference (Kyiv, 2003), UNECE Ministers endorsed recommendations for strengthening environmental monitoring and information systems in European and Central Asian countries prepared by the UNECE Working Group on Environmental Monitoring. Ministers also endorsed the UNECE guidelines for the preparation of national state-of-the environment reports. Together, these documents provide a road map for strengthening monitoring and reporting in the European and Central Asian subregion.