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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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Mission Statement