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News  Africa focuses on GMES
The ‘Lisbon Declaration on GMES and Africa’ has been adopted at a meeting of organisations and governmental European and African bodies and entities under the aegis of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union in Lisbon, Portugal. The Lisbon Declaration falls under the wider framework of the Africa-European Union (EU) Partnership on Science, Information Society and Space of the Africa-EU Action Plan 2008 to 2010. It calls for the first draft of an action plan for establishing the partnership between GMES and Africa to be submitted to EU and African constituencies by the end of 2008.
The European Commission (EC) and the Commission of the African Union will then lead a consolidation process aimed at submitting the action plan for endorsement at the next EU-Africa Summit foreseen for the end of 2009.
Opening the 7 December ceremony, ‘Space for Development: the case for GMES and Africa,’ Dr Volker Liebig, Director of ESA’s Earth Observation Programme, said: "Africa is relevant for Europe, and space is relevant for Africa."
"Sustainable development is top on the agenda of the international community, and it is impossible to address this challenge without space assets. The ESA strategy for Africa is therefore the result of a natural evolution of cooperation in the context of the global concerns we face today."
ESA launched the TIGER Initiative in 2002 following the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. The initiative’s primary objective is to help African countries overcome problems faced in the collection, analysis and dissemination of water-related geo-information by exploiting EO technology. Since then, TIGER has involved more than 150 African organisations investigating the various stages of the water cycle in some 15 projects across the African continent.
In his address, Liebig stressed the experience gained through past cooperation with TIGER, highlighted some major environmental problems facing Africa, such as water scarcity, desertification, loss of biodiversity and food security, and underscored the importance of African participation in order to make the initiative a success.
The meeting was preceded by a technical workshop held on 6 December by the EC, ESA and EUMETSAT. The aim of the workshop was to bring African, European and international users and organisations together in order to prepare the technical groundwork for today’s meeting. GMES is being developed in steps through the introduction of pilot phase services, starting with three fast track services (land, marine, emergency) by the end of 2008. Eleven initial services, which could be successively deployed to support a wide range of needs, have already been identified.
"The very reason for developing a GMES capability in Europe lies in the political recognition of the usefulness of space for improving life on Earth," Liebig concluded. "This political recognition of space makes today’s meeting here in Lisbon possible – and proves to be the best ground for achieving a positive, lasting result for the benefit of Africa and Europe."
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