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The Online Reporting Facility of the IOSEA Marine Turtle Memorandum of Understanding allows users to browse the contents of all reports submitted by the Signatory States. The database presently contains reports from almost all of the 31 IOSEA Signatory States from across the Indian Ocean – South-East Asia region. Information from other countries will be added as they become signatories to the agreement.

Rationale

Many consider the preparation of national reports on the status of implementation of environmental agreements is to be an onerous task. Often, the submission of a report is no guarantee that the contents will actually be used to draw meaningful conclusions and to generate practical recommendations for follow-up action.

For secretariats who receive such reports, compiling the information and presenting it in a uniform format to facilitate comparative analyses is time-consuming. Regretably, because of late receipt of reports and resource limitations, reports are simply shelved and their contents remain largely inaccessible or unknown to those who might be able to make better use of the information.

The IOSEA Online Reporting Facility addresses these shortcomings by allowing Signatory States to submit and update information in a standardised format over the internet – anytime, anywhere. The system has sufficient flexibility to allow for in-depth responses, where necessary, and makes use of “tick-boxes” where appropriate to simplify data entry.

The submission of information in electronic format allows for a wide range of queries and report generation. The data provided can be used for comprehensive analyses of strengths and weaknesses in the application of the IOSEA MoU, and is readily available to all those with an interest in the subject matter.

The online database contains a vast amount of information on measures the Signatory States and other partners have undertaken to implement the MoU's Conservation and Management Plan (CMP). The CMP has six main objectives: reducing turtle mortality, protecting habitat, conducting research and monitoring, improving awareness, enhancing cooperation, and promoting implementation. It includes more than 80 specific activities, organised under 24 separate programmes of work.

Using the IOSEA online database

What kinds of information can be queried?

By way of example, for any given country or sub-region, a user might be interested to know:

• What is the extent and impact of the fisheries in national or international waters that may be interacting with turtles?
  
  
• What are the economic uses and values of turtles in each country? What is the impact of traditional harvest?
  
  
• What efforts are being made to rehabilitate degraded coral reefs. How widespread and effective are nesting beach management programmes?
  
  
• What initiatives have been undertaken to facilitate alternative livelihoods for local communities?
  
  
• What is being done to combat domestic illegal trade in marine turtle products?
  
  
• Which turtle populations, management issues, and sites of importance have been prioritised for national and international collaborative action?

The “Species/Habitats”, “Site Threats”, and “Mitigation Measures” query modules are especially informative. One can query the presence of six marine turtle species at about 750 nesting, feeding and developmental sites around the IOSEA region. One can also query the intensity of more than a dozen specific threats to turtles at these sites – ranging from incidental capture to artificial lighting and predation – as well as some of the mitigation measures and research activities in place to address them.

To give just a few examples of the innumerable searches that can be made, one can use the system to identify:

• All nesting sites in South East Asia where both Green Chelonia mydas and Hawksbill Eretmochelys imbricata turtles are present;
  
  
• All of the feeding sites or developmental habitats found in a given Signatory State in the Western Indian Ocean;
  
  
• Particular sites/areas of the IOSEA region where there is a moderate to strong threat of exploitation of nesting females or of exploitation at sea;
  
  
• Sites where the threat of coastal erosion or sand mining is considered minimal (little or none); or places where there is a high threat of boat strikes;
  
  
• Specific sites/areas in a given Signatory State where monitoring and in-situ protection is in place, and where little or no egg collection is reported to occur;
  
  
• Sites in a given sub-region which are lacking monitoring and in-situ protection of nests;
  
  
• Sites in, say, Philippines and Thailand where both tagging and satellite tracking research has been conducted.

Scope of queries

The system is designed to generate reports on several levels. If a user is interested in a particular Signatory State, the full report of that country may be requested. Reports can also be produced in relation to any of the six objectives of the CMP, and any one of the CMP's specific activities (by country or sub-region or all Signatories). Printing out the results of a tailor-made query is as simple as hitting the print command of an internet browser.

What’s new in the latest version?

The latest version of the IOSEA Online Reporting Facility incorporates many enhancements, in both the Viewer (accessible to all users) and the Editor (restricted by password to IOSEA Focal Points):

The presentation of information in the Objective/Activity Reports is clearer, and most questions include a statistical breakdown/analysis of the responses.

New search engines have been created for the Species/Habitats, Site Threats, and Mitigation Measures modules. These allow the user to construct simple or complex queries to generate lists of sites in the database that match specific criteria defined by the user (for example, with respect to species presence, occurrence of threats of particular intensity, or existence of mitigation measures at particular sites).

The specially-designed user interface makes use of an innovative “toggling” mechanism to generate tailor-made queries, which are now displayed in a query window, making it easier to refine the precise meaning of the query.

From the resulting lists of sites, one can retrieve and print a detailed Site Data Sheet for each and every record in the list.

Improvements have been made to the Site Data Sheets in the Editor as well, allowing Focal Points to incorporate more site-based information (eg. brief descriptions, geographic coordinates, presence of research activities, information sources etc.). Species-related data can now be incorporated even more precisely, including an indication of the relative importance of the site.

We hope you find the IOSEA Online Reporting Facility useful. Of course, there are many gaps in information that need to be filled in by the Signatory States and others involved in turtle conservation. Indeed, one of the strengths of the system, as an analytical tool, is its ability to identify deficiencies in implementation and/or reporting. Signatory States can do their part by regularly contributing new information and ensuring that the database is as comprehensive and up-to-date as possible.

The latest improvements to the IOSEA Online Reporting Facility have been made possible through funding provided by the UNEP Knowledge Management for Biodiversity project.