The Asian Regional Workshop on Data and Information Management serves as a regional echo -workshop to share the learning highlights from the LME:LEARN Data and Information Management: Working Group Meeting and Training that was held in Paris, France from 2 to 4 July 2019.

Data and information function as crucial components of the development, assessment and enforcement of management policies, strategies and interventions. Knowledge sharing and learning exchanges serve as useful platforms for data and information management sharing for the use of various stakeholders, the wider public and practitioners.

In order to guide and support the data and information sharing on Large Marine Ecosystems – LMEs (as well as associated integrated coastal management, marine protected areas and Marine Spatial Planning projects), for use by LME:LEARN stakeholders and the wider public, the LME:LEARN project supports the Data and Information Management Working Group (DIM WG). The DIM WG was established as an informal body to guide the process with a clear mandate to create learning exchanges on data and information management tools to be used by the LME community of practitioners. Several meetings of the DIM WG have taken place since the start of the LME:LEARN project.

The main objective of the workshop is to foster interagency collaboration in sharing data and information for use by new GEF 7 projects and other associated projects in the region. As these projects require landscape assessments or baseline data, knowledge sharing and information exchanges on data and tools used can guide and support data and information sharing on Large Marine Ecosystems (LME) as well as associated integrated coastal management (ICM) projects.

This workshop aimed to:

• Discuss common indicators for comparison of progress in implementation of SAPs between LMEs
• Exchange best practices on DIM especially in data collection, knowledge repositories, results and analysis methodologies, assessments and processes to influence policies
• Present state of the art tools, KM platforms and databases from GEF IW:LEARN and other tools being utilised at the regional level, such as PEMSEA's State of the Coast reporting and thier Integrated Information Management Systems (IIMS)