Day by day, we see a
key challenge to better care for the atmosphere,
air, land, water and seas: namely, how to
best utilise the mounting data from satellites
and monitoring stations in ways that are
useful to people and the planet.
Email5 6 6 3
More intelligent harvesting
and management of environmental data is
going to be among the keys to how far and
how fast a sustainable 21st century can
be forged.
By Achim Steiner, UN
Under-Secretary General and Executive Director
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
This article first appeared
in the National Newspaper Abu Dhabi on 12
December 2011
Further Resources
UNEP Green Economy Initiative
Eye on Earth SummitAfrica is arguably the
most vulnerable Continent to climate change
on many counts-gathering high quality weather
and climate data is therefore crucial for
the kinds of reliable and timely weather
forecasts needed by planners to avert the
worst impacts of droughts and floods.
Good weather forecasting
can also link into micro-insurance schemes,
such as those tested in Ethiopia by the
World Food Programme, where farmers get
financial support when rainfall drops below
a pre-determined threshold and before they
are down to their last bag of maize or cow.
Yet by some estimates
about 25 per cent out of the Global Climate
Observing System surface stations in east
and southern Africa are not working and
most of the remaining stations elsewhere
in Africa are functioning in a less than
desirable manner. Around a fifth of the
10 upper air network stations are in a similar
state.
Overall it is estimated
that Africa needs 200 automatic weather
stations and a major effort to rescue historical
data, a significant amount of which remains
in paper form rather than digitized for
deployment in modern forecasting and climate
super computer modeling.
In respect to rivers
globally most data on flows, water withdrawls
and the recharge rates of underground aquifers
are patchy (to say the least) across rivers
basins and freshwater shared by more than
two nations. Information on water quality
can be even more challenging especially
in developing countries.
Only 0.1 per cent of
the oceans have been mapped at a scale as
detailed as a hectare, and large tracts
of the seafloor, such as most of the southern
ocean, have not been mapped at all-we have
better data on the surface of the moon.
The situation brings
into sharp focus some of the key challenges
in terms of better managing the atmosphere,
air, land, water and seas: namely data gaps,
access to data and how best to utilize the
mounting volumes from satellites to monitoring
stations in ways that are useful to people
and the planet.
The Eye on Earth Abu
Dhabi 2011 Summit taking place in mid December
under the patronage of the United Arab Emirates
President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin
Zayed Al Nahyan and in partnership with
the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP), is an opportunity to accelerate
and bridge this crucial gap in humanity's
efforts to realize a low carbon, resource
efficient 21st century Green Economy.
Some of the data challenges
are, as with Africa's weather and climate
monitoring, a question of technological
capacity and improved networks.
Cities in West Asia
can have high values of air pollution due
to the dusty desert environment of the region.
Environment Agency -Abu Dhabi has embarked
on an effort to expand its air quality monitoring
network by doubling the number of monitoring
stations.
This will give city
planners access to information on air quality
on different development scenarios, allowing
them to make more informed decisions when
it comes to planning future projects.
Harnessing 'citizen'
science, including the networks of mobile
phones users, is also part of the environmental
data debate and an area identified as a
promising opportunity by Global Pulse, a
new initiative by Ban ki-Moon, the UN Secretary
General.
The public and their
cell phones could, if encouraged, become
early warning systems of droughts and floods,
as well as forest fires and wildlife poaching.
In India, Project Suraya-
which is linked to UNEP's Atmospheric Brown
Cloud initiative- is using special cell
phones in villages to measure levels of
black carbon emitted by cook stoves.
The project is also
linking to satellites with the aim of measuring
how more efficient stoves are simultaneously
improving public health while providing
climate benefits in the atmosphere.
Addressing the data
challenge and opportunities also hinges
on how to encourage greater openness and
more regular data sharing between academics,
universities and the private sector.
The oil and gas industry
for example carries out Environmental Impact
Assessments, including in the Gulf region,
which in turn generates large amounts of
data on species such as dolphins, as well
as whole ecosystems such as coral reefs
and seagrass beds.
But much of this vital
data is often lost to researchers and policymakers
for a range of reasons from privacy considerations
up to the fact that such surveys and the
underlying raw data is often not standardized.
Data specialists and
policymakers may imagine they live in very
different and perhaps disconnected worlds.
The Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit is
a real opportunity and a bold initiative
to build better understanding and closer
relationships to realize the benefits of
tighter collaboration.
The potential is profound:
As the world looks to Rio+20 in June 2012,
20 years after the Rio Earth Summit that
set the course of contemporary sustainable
development, more intelligent harvesting
and management of environmental data is
going to be among the keys to how far and
how fast a sustainable 21st century can
be forged.
