Earthwatch
Working Party 3
(New York, 17-18 January 1996)
REPORT
OF THE MEETING
1. The third
meeting of the Earthwatch Working Party was convened by UNEP and hosted
by UNDP in New York on 17-18 January 1996, with Earthwatch focal points
and other representatives of agencies, organizations and convention
secretariats of the United Nations system in attendance (see Annex 1).
The meeting was opened by the Deputy Assistant Executive Director, Environment
Assessment Division, UNEP, and Coordinator, UN System-wide Earthwatch.
2. The Working
Party approved the provisional agenda (see Annex 2), and invited Mr.
Peter Gilruth, UNDP, and Mr. Michel Jarraud, WMO, to serve as co-chairs
of the meeting. It was agreed to work informally and by consensus.
The representative of DPCSD informed the meeting that the Inter-Agency
Committee on Sustainable Development was meeting in early February and
had asked to receive the report of this meeting.
Agenda
Item 3: Progress Report
3. The Coordinator,
UN System-wide Earthwatch presented a progress report (UNEP/EWWP3/1)
summarizing the decisions on Earthwatch at the third session of the
Commission on Sustainable Development and the Eighteenth UNEP Governing
Council, and describing actions taken on decisions of the last Earthwatch
Working Party. The papers submitted to these bodies and the resulting
decisions provided a strong basis for the UN system- wide Earthwatch
as a mechanism to support better coordination across the UN system,
building bridges and identifying areas for cooperation and gaps to be
filled. At a time of decreasing resources, it is important to
help in setting priorities, and to show how information and assessment
responsibilities can be carried out more effectively. Coherence
among all activities on information for decision-making is important,
as demonstrated by holding the integrated and complementary series of
meetings on Development Watch, Earthwatch, access to data and core data
sets. The possibility of combining more issues in a single meeting
could also be considered.
4. With reference
to the recommendation of the ACC, accepted by the UNEP Governing Council,
that the Earthwatch Working Party should give further attention to conceptual
issues involved in linking socio-economic and environmental assessment
and reporting, the Working Party noted the importance of this issue
to the success of Development Watch as well as Earthwatch, and considered
this question a high priority. Summary information was provided
on progress in such initiatives as the SCOPE project on indicators of
sustainable development, which was initiated with the cooperation of
the Earthwatch Coordination office and supported in part by UNEP, and
was addressing linkages, as well as the Global Environmental Outlook
process organized by UNEP, with its focus on models and scenarios integrating
social, economic and environmental concerns. The Working Party
recommended that Earthwatch should continue its catalytic activity in
this area, and in particular should identify those groups or projects
working on such linkages and encourage them to cooperate in responding
to the need for workable approaches that could be implemented in assessing
sustainable development at the national and international levels.
The SCOPE project in particular could be invited to identify those methodologies
which might be useful for integrating indicators into useful measures
of sustainability that could assist decision-makers at the national
level.
5. The UN System-wide
Earthwatch Programme Document assembled last year has proven to be very
useful. The electronic version should be kept continuously up
to date, and all partners were requested to provide information on changes
to the secretariat. More sections on information activities under
the conventions were also required; the secretariats could be sent the
questionnaire provided earlier to the agencies. The printed version
of the programme document should be revised as part of the preparations
for the 1997 review of progress on Agenda 21.
6. The difficult
issue of principles or policies for the sharing of information within
the UN system is being considered by the Information Systems Coordination
Committee (ISCC). WMO had recently adopted a meteorological data
policy which was distributed at the meeting. It was recommended
that all Earthwatch partners that have data sharing policies should
provide them to the secretariat so that they could be distributed to
the organizations as a basis for further discussion on this issue.
The question may also be addressed in the subsequent meeting on access
to data.
7. The secretariat
should continue to collect information on participatory observation
activities for eventual use by agencies that might need these approaches
to fill data gaps. The interest of religious leaders in Earthwatch
was appreciated, and it would be useful if the secretariat could obtain
the names of focal points in religious organizations with whom to follow
up. WMO already makes considerable use of such participatory observations
on an ad hoc basis.
Agenda
item 4: Review of actual and potential inter-agency collaboration in
the framework of Earthwatch
8. Many of the
organizations present reported on their recent data collection and assessment
activities. It was agreed that it would be useful in the framework
of Earthwatch to have a system-wide multi-year calendar or schedule
of planned assessment activities and reports to facilitate collaboration
and joint programming. The secretariat was requested to propose
a format or matrix for such a schedule, with a mechanism so that each
partner could submit and then regularly up-date information on their
own activities.
9. The increasing
importance of the environmental conventions in data collection and assessment
to meet their reporting requirements justified continuing efforts to
involve them in the system-wide Earthwatch. As more such conventions
are implemented, there may be a tendency to shift assessment responsibilities
from UN agencies to the conferences of the parties and their advisory
bodies. Earthwatch would provide an appropriate forum to discuss
and suggest ways to resolve potential areas of overlap or duplication,
and to ensure that the widest use was made of all data collected, beyond
the immediate requirements of the conventions. The oceans were
identified as an area where more coordination in some specific data
collection and reporting might be needed with the increasing number
of agreements and activities, although this could also be addressed
in the ACC subcommittee on oceans. The participation of two convention
secretariats in the Working Party was appreciated, and others had indicated
that, although they could not be present, they wanted to stay involved
in Earthwatch.
10. The Secretariat
of the Basel Convention pointed out the growing requirements to collect
and assess data on wastes, including their production, management and
disposal. This was a gap that had been neglected in the past and
for which no UN agency has a central mandate. In addition to the
extensive data on hazardous wastes collected under the Basel Convention,
a number of UN bodies have started to collect waste information in an
uncoordinated way from different parts of government. Since this
is a new field, it should be possible to streamline data collection
efforts and avoid mistakes made too often in other fields. The
Earthwatch Coordination office, in cooperation with the Basel Convention,
was asked to find out from the pertinent parts of the UN system what
kinds of data on wastes they need to collect, what they are actually
collecting, and from whom. It could then prepare a document defining
the scope of the problem, which could be used to draw the attention
of IACSD and other appropriate bodies to this important gap.
11. The representative
of the Law of the Sea Convention described their reporting requirements
pursuant to the Convention and the relevant General Assembly resolutions
as well as their information sharing and clearing-house functions.
IAEA provided an up-date of all their activities related to Agenda 21,
and noted the new reporting requirements to be generated by the Convention
on Nuclear Safety which was expected to come into force soon.
The UN Statistics Division reported on their Task Force on Environmental
Statistics and their plans to distribute a questionnaire on environmental
indicators to all national statistical services by the end of the year,
so that routine data collection could begin next year. DPCSD described
progress on indicators of sustainable development, for which methodologies
have been developed. UNDP referred to the progress on Development
Watch, in the meeting just preceding the Earthwatch Working Party, for
which inter-agency collaboration would be essential. WMO made
available an up-date on their data collection activities, and the recent
WMO/UNEP biennial climate system review. A review of the climate of
the 20th century is being prepared, and agency participation was invited.
12. UNICEF described
their need for data relevant to environmental impacts on the health
and well-being of children, which might be collected by or held in other
agencies. Examples given were agrochemical use in rural areas,
lead contamination, and other aspects of environmental degradation that
could affect women and children. It was agreed that health effects
were a significant cross-linking issue in assessments, related for instance
to toxic wastes under the Basel Convention, radioactive wastes under
IAEA, and the use of chemicals in general.
13. UNEP provided a
description of its new Global Environmental Outlook process and report,
which was a forward-looking biennial report on the state of the environment
based on a global participatory assessment process. It would include
an overview of regional concerns, models and scenarios to provide an
integrated view of present and future concerns, and illustrative examples
of selected issues such as trade, production and consumption, drylands
and biodiversity. Organizations involved in the system-wide Earthwatch
were invited to contribute to the preparation of this report.
A particular need was for brief information on changes in the state
of the environment or in our understanding of environmental problems
since the Rio conference in 1992. The Working Party requested
UNEP to provide more details in written form so that the agencies could
respond effectively. Concern was expressed that any significant
contribution from agencies to the GEO report should be appropriately
identified and acknowledged.
14. There was a general
concern that budgetary problems around the world were resulting in a
significant reduction in environmental observation and data collection
activities just when the importance of that information for management
action to avoid major problems was being recognized. Earthwatch
was important to build a case for adequate support to essential observations
of the planetary environment.
Agenda
item 5: The Earthwatch World Wide Web site and the evolution of a UN
information system
15. UNEP presented
its proposals for a UN system-wide Earthwatch World Wide Web site at
http://www.unep.ch/earthw.html (UNEP/EWWP3/2) as well as a paper suggesting
the possible conceptual evolution of a UN information system (UNEP/EWWP3/3)
to provide the background and context within which an Earthwatch initiative
in this area should be developed. Information on UNESCO-MABnet
(http://www.unesco.org:80/mab/theMabnet.html) had also been supplied
to the meeting by UNESCO. The CSD also has a web site with all
its documentation (http://www.un.org/dpcsd/home.htm).
16. The representative
of the IOC presented the interactive electronic bulletin on the World
Wide Web (http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.edu/igoss/productsbulletin) developed
by the Lamont- Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University under
the aegis of the IOC/WMO Integrated Global Ocean Services System.
This operational system demonstrated the potential for providing free
interactive access to and distribution of global data sets in ways that
facilitated their comparison and integration with other kinds of data.
The tools developed were offered for use with other data sets in the
framework of Earthwatch. While this bulletin had been developed
as a scientific and academic activity, there was a need for modest continuing
financial support from member States to maintain the system on an operational
basis. This is a problem common to many observation and assessment
activities that should be addressed in Earthwatch. The development
of useful outputs or products would help to provide the justification
for support of such operational systems, as demonstrated by the observations
necessary to predict the El Niño- Southern Oscillation and its
global impacts.
17. The Information
Systems Coordinating Committee (ISCC) is developing the UN system's
home page (http://www.unicc.org/), which is being supported operationally
by the ICC. It will include directories of all UN organizations,
an index by subject area and a search capability. The Working
Party confirmed that directories and metadata about environmental databases
are important.
18. With the rapid
growth in the activities of all Earthwatch partners to establish World
Wide Web sites on the internet, there was strong support for a continuing
Earthwatch role to interlink and facilitate access to all this information.
The work of Earthwatch should complement the work of the ISCC on the
technical aspects of UN system collaboration over the internet.
Each partner should keep its identity and its responsibility for its
own information at its own site, but Earthwatch could assist in a loose
coordinating role, such as by assembling tools for user access and suggesting
forms of information presentation and interlinkage that would respond
best to user needs. The system-wide Earthwatch home page should
provide an entry point and cross-linking service between the Earthwatch
partners, with each agency page providing a pointer back to the system-wide
Earthwatch. The goal could be a kind of "virtual" system-wide
Earthwatch inter- relating the contributions of each partner.
The first priority should be to target users in governments and the
UN system. It was agreed that the Earthwatch Coordination office
should continue to provide proposals on the structure and format of
web sites, and should help to coordinate the use of any capacities which
the partners might be able to make available in a shared effort to develop
a coherent and efficient World Wide Web system. The agencies in
the Geneva area could form a local group for collaboration on this,
with other partners involved by e-mail if they so desired.
Agenda
item 6: Mechanisms for effective early warning
19. Since early warning
of major international environmental problems is one of the concerns
of Earthwatch, the secretariat presented a discussion paper on some
possible mechanisms for early warning on environmental issues (UNEP/EWWP3/4).
Early warning was recognized by the Working Party as an important concern
of Earthwatch that required continuing work. Any further efforts
should be complementary to the work on short-term early warning of disasters,
and to early warning mechanisms that already exist and that were working
well in particular areas.
20. The recent excellent
report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly on early warning
of disasters (A/50/526), prepared under the leadership of IDNDR, should
be distributed to all participants, as it provides a useful overall
analysis of short-term early warning mechanisms.
21. In order to identify
the real needs for additional early warning mechanisms, the secretariat
was requested to prepare a report on gaps and deficiencies in early
warning, perhaps based on past examples, to facilitate further discussion
on this issue at the next meeting. All the participants in Earthwatch
were invited to submit examples of inadequate early warnings to the
secretariat.
22. A related
issue already highlighted by the Working Party at its last meeting was
the need for better mechanisms to distribute some early warnings to
a wider audience beyond the constituency of a particular agency.
The proposed Earthwatch policy bulletins might be a mechanism to do
this. This issue should be a high priority for further work under
Earthwatch.
Agenda
item 7: The global observing systems
23. As a contribution
towards keeping all of the partners in Earthwatch informed of the status
of the Global Observing Systems (GCOS, GTOS and GOOS), UNEP submitted
for the information of the participants a document prepared at its request
on the origins, characteristics and present state of development of
these systems highlighting the common elements between the systems and
the need for a common strategy for global observations (UNEP/EWWP3/5).
WMO noted a number of problems with the document in its present form,
since it had not been prepared on behalf of the co-sponsors, and time
had not permitted its review and correction by the co-sponsors before
its distribution at the meeting. In particular, the report should
give more emphasis to the extensive coordination and collaboration that
already exists between the observing systems, and to the long-standing
contributions of data from sources such as the World Weather Watch,
Global Atmosphere Watch, IGOSS and IODE. UNEP took note of the
corrections proposed by WMO to be incorporated before further distribution
of the document.
24. The Working Party
expressed its great pleasure with the recent decision to establish a
support office for GTOS within FAO, and for the significant support
that FAO and the other co-sponsors were making available to ensure
the effective launching of this important programme.
25. With respect to
the need for further coordination between the observing systems, the
Working Party noted that the co-sponsors were considering the establishment
of a small umbrella group of the co-sponsors and secretariats of the
three systems. It decided to keep this item on its agenda, as
it was useful for the larger circle of Earthwatch participants to be
kept informed of the progress in these major observation activities.
Agenda
item 8: Participation by governments, the scientific community and non-governmental
organizations
26. The Earthwatch
Working Party had discussed the involvement of the scientific community
and NGOs in Earthwatch at its last meeting, but had only decided to
include appropriate information on their activities in the Earthwatch
Programme document. A recent problem had arisen when it did not
seem appropriate to discuss coordination among the Global observing
Systems in the Working Party because the International Council of Scientific
Unions (ICSU), a co-sponsor of all three systems, was not a participant
in Earthwatch. After considerable discussion of the advantages
and disadvantages of NGO participation in a UN system coordination process
like Earthwatch it was agreed that non-UN organizations can be invited
on an ad hoc basis to attend specific meetings or parts of meetings
of the Earthwatch Working Party where their expertise is appropriate
to the mission of Earthwatch. In such cases, any participant or
the secretariat can make proposals regarding the participants, and if
there is no objection, the secretariat can issue such invitations.
Agenda
items 9-12: Other business
27. Given the increasing
difficulty many organizations felt in attending meetings requiring travel,
the Working Party considered to what extent its work could be undertaken
by electronic means. The secretariat provided a short paper with
proposals for a "virtual" Earthwatch Working Party (UNEP/EWWP3/6) so
that the participants could review the implications of new technologies
for their work. A major handicap at present is that a significant
number of Earthwatch focal points do not yet have adequate internet
connectivity, and would thus be excluded from such exchanges.
It was agreed to start experimenting with work through e- mail on certain
subjects that were most appropriate to that form of decision-making,
but that the nature of the wide-ranging discussions necessary for system-wide
Earthwatch coordination required some face-to-face meetings. The
possibility of video-conferencing, at least between two groups gathered
in Geneva and New York, should be explored. Consultations on the
agenda by e-mail, and distribution of working papers well in advance
of the meeting to allow those unable to attend to comment in writing
(as had been done with the major papers for this meeting), would also
help to keep everyone involved. Comments from absent organizations
on the reports of Earthwatch Working Party meetings could also be considered
at subsequent meetings.
28. It was agreed that
the next meeting of the Earthwatch Working Party would be held in Geneva
in October 1996, preferably in conjunction with the next meeting on
Development Watch. This meeting would prepare major input for
the Task Managers' report on Agenda 21, Chapter 40: Information for
Decision-making, for the five year review of progress in implementing
Agenda 21 by the Commission on Sustainable Development and the UN General
Assembly Special Session in 1997. It should therefore have a broader
scope than the usual meeting and be organized in cooperation with DPCSD.
29. The participants
noted in closing the excellent spirit of inter-agency cooperation in
the Earthwatch Working Party, which should certainly lead to effective
results.
30. The report of the
meeting was reviewed and adopted.
31. The meeting was
closed at 5:10 p.m. on 18 January 1996.
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