Rio+20 Summit: Earth observation for us and our planet
Baku, June 27 (AZERTAC). The Rio+20 summit on promoting jobs, clean energy and a more sustainable use of our planet's resources closed June 22 after three days of talks. During the summit, the role of Earth observation in sustainable development was highlighted.
During a side event organised by ESA, the significance of observing Earth from space came into focus, in particular how it improves the assessment and the monitoring of essential climate change, biodiversity and land degradation variables.
Earth-observing satellites allow for efficient, reliable and affordable monitoring of our planet from global to local scales. In many cases, it is the only way to obtain trend information on essential environmental variables.
The large volume of data acquired from over 30 years of satellite observations gives scientists a unique and detailed view of the changing physical characteristics of the Earth surface, sampled at a rate impossible to obtain with only in-situ observations.
The strong contributions that space observations can bring to environmental monitoring have now been recognised by the Rio Convention bodies: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
ESA began collaborations with these Rio Conventions 10 years ago.
During the side event, representatives from all three Conventions reiterated that the collection of Earth observation data needs to be sustained.
ESA plans to continue to provide operational data delivery to these Conventions as well as for many other applications with the upcoming Sentinel family of satellites being developed under Europe's Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme.
At the conclusion of the summit, the Rio+20 Declaration stressed the need for the continuation of a regular review of the state of Earth's changing environment, as well as access to reliable, relevant and timely data in areas related to sustainable development.
It also recognised the relevance of global mapping and recognise the efforts in developing global environmental observing systems.
Rio+20 saw additional side events on Earth observation organised by the Group on Earth Observations, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs.
Other news in this section
