The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) held its plenary and ministerial meeting in Mexico City from 11 to 13 November 2015. It attracted a lot of media attention, not least because of the build-up to the Paris COP21 meeting on climate change in December.
GEO has now adopted its new strategy 2016 to 2025. As a result of an ECMWF intervention, the strategy underlines the overarching challenge of climate change.
The strategy establishes a set of eight societal benefit areas that will be a focus for GEO activities in the coming decade:
- Disaster Resilience
- Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture
- Water Resources
- Energy and Mineral Resources
- Public Health Surveillance
- Biodiversity and Ecosystem Sustainability
- Sustainable Urban Development
- Infrastructure and Transportation
The importance of using Earth observations and related information to help the world achieve the sustainable development goals is a main driver of the strategy. The GEO Ministers issued a statement as a result of their deliberations:
The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Mexico City Declaration
A key theme of GEO is open data sharing, which accords with the data policy of the EU’s Copernicus Earth observation services. Throughout the GEO plenary and ministerial meeting, the important role of Copernicus services as the main contribution of the European Commission to GEO was emphasised.
Having been entrusted by the European Commission to operate the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring and Climate Change Services, ECMWF has become a major provider of environmental data to the GEO community. In addition, ECMWF continues to contribute to GEO on the use of Earth observations to analyse and predict the weather and climate. The availability of datasets such as TIGGE and S2S is also a key contribution from ECMWF.
Jean-Noël Thépaut, the head of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said: “Our presentation of the two Copernicus Services in a dedicated Copernicus session raised a lot of interest and triggered many questions. Our exhibition booth attracted a good audience from the Latin American community. This shows that our efforts to reach out to a wider audience are starting to pay off."
ECMWF statement to GEO Ministerial Summit