ENVIS Centre:
The Environmental Information System (ENVIS Programme) was introduced by the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Govt. of India, during the end of 6 th Five year Plan Scheme for collection, collation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of environmental information to planners, decision makers, scientists, environmentalists, researchers, academicians and other stake holders. ENVIS is a decentralized computerized network database system consisting of the focal point located in the Ministry and a chain of network partners, known as ENVIS Centres located in the potential organizations, institutions throughout the country. In order to develop ENVIS network as a comprehensive distributed environmental information network system, the ENVIS was extended to cover all the States/UTs of the country. Presently, the ENVIS network consist of 78 ENVIS Centres apart from the focal point, out of which, 30 ENVIS Centres are with State Government Departments dealing with the status of Environment and related issues of the concerned State Government and the remaining 48 have been set up on various environmental disciplines covering from air pollution, water pollution, noise pollution, biodiversity, solid waste management, ecology, natural resources, meteorology etc. The ENVIS node at the Centre for Environmental Studies was declared as ENVIS Centre in 2005. The objectives this are: To provide national environmental information service relevant to present needs and capable of development to meet the future needs of users.
  • To build up storage, retrieval and dissemination capabilities, with the ultimate objective of disseminating information speedily to the users.
  • To promote national and international cooperation and liaison for exchange of Environment related information.
  • To promote exchange of information among countries and region.

The ENVIS Centre is mandated to develop and maintain an information base that includes both descriptive information as well as numerical data. Descriptive information in the form of publications, reports, reprints and abstracts on different topic will be stored for dissemination. Numerical data on the said subjects will be collected, compiled, processed and analyzed for the purpose of dissemination. Documentation in the form of publications and reports would be brought out. All the information compiled will be made available on the website launched. Immediate and long term objective: The ENVIS Centre will collect books, reports and journals for retrieval, dissemination and database creation.

  • To host and maintain a website.
  • To publish abstracts on the subject area.
  • To have linkages with information sources in the country and abroad for increasing the information contents.

To supply information on the queries referred to it, by ENVIS Focal Point, Central Government, Departments and organization State Government Departments and Organizations, Scientific Institutions and Research scientists in the country, in the form of copies of published reports, documents, abstracts and research papers.

  • To help in building up an inventory of authentic and reliable information material.
  • To establish data bank containing data on relevant subject area.
  • To identify data gaps and knowledge gaps in their subject areas and prepare a status report and enable policy decision.
  • To bring out newsletters and other publications in their subject areas.