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Mission Statement
The United Nations System-wide Earthwatch mechanism
is a broad UN initiative to coordinate, harmonize and catalyze environmental
observation activities among all UN
agencies for integrated assessment purposes. Through Earthwatch, UN
agencies work together on global environmental issues, by exchanging and
sharing environmental data and information. UNEP provides the Earthwatch
secretariat. Earthwatch was established at the 1972 UN Conference on the
Human Environment in Stockholm and reinforced by the 1992 UN Conference
on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro and its Agenda-21 chapter
on Information for Decision Making.
Background
In 1973, the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) introduced Earthwatch, as a means
of coordinating and acting as a catalyst for all environmental monitoring
and assessment activities throughout the entire UN system. The raison
d'être was and remains to provide `integrated’ information
gathered from across the UN system relevant for policymaking by building
essential partnerships across the UN system with the scientific community,
governments and NGOs.
In June 1994, The first inter-agency Earthwatch
Working Party agreed on the following mission statement for the revitalized
Earthwatch:
"The mission of the UN
system-wide Earthwatch is to coordinate, harmonize and integrate observing,
assessment and reporting activities across the UN system in order to provide
environmental and appropriate socio-economic information for national
and international decision-making on sustainable development and for early
warning of emerging problems requiring international action. This should
include timely information on the pressures on, status of and trends in
key global resources, variables and processes in both natural and human
systems and on the response to problems in these areas."
The terms of reference of the UN system-wide
Earthwatch are to:
- facilitate
access to information on on-going and planned environmental activities,
and to information held by each part of the system;
- identify
possibilities for collaboration and mutual reinforcement among agency
observation and assessment programmes and reports, and with outside
partners including governments, the scientific community, NGOs and the
private sector;
- promote
and monitor capacity-building for data collection, assessment and reporting;
- improve
and obtain international agreement on the harmonization and quality
control of data and the standardization of methodologies to ensure reliable
and comparable information on the environment at the national and international
levels;
- facilitate
the wider use of information and assessments from each partner beyond
its own constituency in national and international decision-making processes;
- coordinate
joint reporting on broad interdisciplinary issues such as the global
state of the environment and sustainable development;
- identify
priorities for international action;
- establish
joint procedures to identify the need for early warnings of emerging
environmental problems and to bring such warnings to the attention of
the international community;
- share
experience in applying new technologies and in increasing the impact
of environmental and sustainable development information and reports;
- assist
in increasing support for observing, assessment, reporting and capacity-building
activities across the whole UN system and its programme countries;
- demonstrate
the ability of the United Nations to organize coherent plans for activities
responding to system-wide mandates such as Agenda 21.
Earthwatch Coordination
Earthwatch Coordination extends the mandate
and activities of UNEP's Division of Early Warning and Assessment to the
whole United Nations system. It provides leadership and direction to the
UN System-wide Earthwatch established at the UN Conference on the Human
Environment in Stockholm in 1972. Its mission is to coordinate, harmonize
and integrate observing, assessment and reporting activities across the
UN system in order to provide environmental and appropriate socio-economic
information for national and international decision making on sustainable
development and for early warning of emerging problems requiring international
action.
The activities of Earthwatch Coordination
include:
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Maintaining an effective UN
system-wide Earthwatch process through inter-agency coordination,
harmonization and integration of environmental observations, assessments
and reporting through the annual Earthwatch Working Party, the Earthwatch
web site, electronic communications with focal points, and other inter-agency
activities.
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As Earthwatch Task Manager, and
in collaboration with the UN Division for Sustainable Development,
follow up the implementation of Agenda
21 Chapter 40: Information for Decision-making, which is the
cross-cutting theme for the Commission for Sustainable Development
in 2001.
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Providing strategic direction, and supporting the implementation
of the UNEP Environmental Observing and Assessment Strategy
through a UN Foundation/UN Fund for International Partnerships project
developed and launched through Earthwatch Coordination.
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Supporting the Global Environment Outlook (GEO) process and
other UNEP state-of-the-environment reporting through direct
inputs, capacity-building in GEO collaborating centres, and organizing
participation by the UN system in GEO.
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Providing UNEP leadership
in the Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS) Partnership
between space agencies, UN agencies, global research programmes and
observing systems, and in the Global Observing Systems (GCOS, GOOS,
GTOS) and their Sponsors Group:
- contributing to secretariat services for the IGOS Partnership,
- maintaining the IGOS web pages (http://www.igospartners.org/), and
- participating as possible in the intergovernmental meetings and
steering committees of the G3OS.
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Strengthening collaboration
and coordination with the scientific community:
- reviewing international scientific advisory processes for environment
and sustainable development, and
- supervising development by the Scientific Committee on Problems
of the Environment (SCOPE) of a strategic cooperative network for
early warning.
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Stimulating the development of
indicators of environment and sustainable development, including:
- collaboration with the UN Division for Sustainable Development in
implementing the Commission on Sustainable Development work programme
on indicators of sustainable development;
- participation in the Consultative Group on Sustainable Development
Indicators;
- cooperation with targeted programmes of other agencies to develop
sectoral indicators.
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Providing UNEP guidance and supporting
information resources for assessment and action on Small Island
Developing States (SIDS), coral reefs, and marine environmental and
international waters assessments:
- documentation centre and on-line bibliography,
- UNEP islands web page (http://www.unep.ch/islands.html).
- on-line Island Directory of over 2000 islands
- training materials on island environmental management
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