United Nations principles on remotely sensed data United Nations principles on remotely sensed data
CEOS satellite data exchange principles for global change data
CEOS satellite data exchange principles for operational environmental
data for public benefit
The political organization of mankind is based on the existence of independent and sovereign nations, under the overarching consultation framework of the United Nations Organization. This is the main level at which decisions are made. States are more or less decentralized, so that some decision powers - whether small or large - may be left to local authorities. At both levels, policy and decision makers need reliable information in order to prepare and take proper decisions, evaluate their consequences, go further or take corrective measures in case of unexpected situations. The corresponding scales are highly variable : they may extend from the size of a city to that of the largest countries. Most of the case studies presented in this CD-ROM were designed to show how remotely sensed information can be used to bring some help in such a decision framework.
Unfortunately, however, it should be noted that the past and present history of the nations is most often modeled by war and peace. In order to secure peace - a first level of international security - bilateral or multilateral treaties were negotiated and signed, directly or indirectly addressing military issues. Nevertheless, it is well known that the confidence in treaties is highly consolidated by the capacity for each Party to control whether its counterpart(s) actually applies them or not. Earth observation from space for military intelligence purposes is a major tool for such a monitoring. Such results are obviously kept secret, which should not lead to the error of minimizing the role of remote sensing for this "first level" international security use.
Political decisions are made at national level, and their most direct consequences appear and can be assessed at that level. However, natural phenomena usually ignore political boundaries - even when they are drawn using natural features such as mountains, watersheds, or rivers. Some of these phenomena may partly have man-made origins, which shows that national political decisions can more or less obviously have internatio nal consequences.
An obvious example is water resources. Let us consider a river flowing from one country to another one. Decisions (or lack of decisions) in the upstream country, such as building dams, strongly increasing the water pumping for domestic use or irrigation purposes may cause severe water shortages in the downstream country. If the water resource is scarce in this country, it can lead to severe economic loss, impacts on health or even loss of human lives. This will obviously lead to an accute international crisis and may even degenerate into war. Most of the geopolitical analysts consider that the scarcity of water resources is one of the severe problems our century will have to face. Earth Observation from space can help in assessing such situations, for instance by observing the temporal evolution of the extent of open water surfaces, and indices of irrigation or water scarcity such as the spatial and temporal variations of the vegetation phenological cycle.
A less obvious example, which has been strongly disputed in scientific, industrial and political circles, is the global climate warming. It can be considered as certain that the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes a global climate warming, which has some adverse effects all around the world. CO2 is the most important stable greenhouse gas. Human activities may result in increasing its atmospheric concentration, either by suppressing some natural sinks such as forests, or by increasing sources like fires or the burning of fossil energy reservoirs. In such a case too, political decisions or lack of decisions at the national level (forest policy, energy policy,...) can cause worldwide adverse effects. Policy makers may however privilege decisions based on short term advantages rather than difficult and unpopular decisions based on long term general interest benefits - which may be presented as highly questionable by some media. The objective observation of the earth surface provided by remote sensing techniques, coupled with in situ data through assimilation into proper models, may help to analyze better the situation and extrapolate it through various scenarios.
Regional and global environmental problems raise more and more concerns among policy makers, who have to solve conflicting interests at the national and international levels. In order to cope with these environmental global issues resulting from national decisions and policies, international conventions and protocols are necessary, just as in the case of war and peace described above. Most often elaborated within the United Nations Organization framework, the number of such environmental conventions is always increasing, and they become more and more stringent. A tentative list of the most important ones can be found in the present CD-ROM (see "Information requirements and associated spatial observation data for the monitoring of the united nations framework convention for the control of global change and the Kyoto protocol"
). In a similar way as peace issues, setting up confidence through adequate monitoring tools is mandatory, which should lead to develop a "civilian intelligence" technology, not so far from military intelligence, at least in its concepts and objectives. Ideally, a seamless transition could be imagined between the two concepts. Actual solutions should be made more realistic. Some initiatives such as GMES ("Global monitoring for Environment and Security") in Europe are implicitly based on such thoughts..
Again, Earth Observation from space and its derived technologies can be used for monitoring purposes and should play a major role in building international confidence. Some present examples can be found in this CD-ROM, such as for instance ozone monitoring (see "Montoring of polar ozone depletion using crs-2 gome data" in CASE STUDIES, "ERS GOME" in DATA SETS, "ADEOS OCTS" in SATELLITE SYSTEM )
Obviously, the CEOS CD-ROM has to give an accurate vision of these global environmental issues. The text of the most important environmental conventions and protocols can be found in the present section. In addition, illustrations, analyses and cases studies dealing with the actual and potential role of Earth Observation derived technologies for monitoring purposes are presented in other sections.
The Montreal protocol
The Kyoto protocol
The biodiversity convention
The desertification convention
The UNFCCC convention
The RAMSAR convention
