Realization of the Sustainable Development Goals through AfriGEOSS Phil Mjwara Director General, Dep. Science & Technology, South Africa GEO-Co Chair AARSE 2016 24 – 28 October 2016 Kampala, Uganda

SDGs and Earth Observation Transforming our World: The 2030 Plan for Global Action - Article 76: We will promote transparent and accountable scaling-up of appropriate public-private cooperation to exploit the contribution to be made by a wide range of data, including Earth observation and geo-spatial information, while ensuring national ownership in supporting and tracking progress.

Earth Observation contribution to SDGs Society/ Governance Science/ Technology Earth Observations Impacts/ Metrics SDGs Indicators Targets Implementation Progress EVs Monitoring & Feedback EO support to SDGs - Direct Measure of Indicators and contribution to others - Contribution to progress on Targets that will show up in the indicators Are we making progress towards the targets? What decisions should we make to improve/facilitate progress towards the targets? Do we have the right metrics to measure progress?

GEO Initiative: Earth Observations in Service of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goal I: Earth observations and geospatial information contribute in novel and practical ways to support achievement of the SDGs. Goal II: Increase skills and capabilities in uses of Earth observations for SDG activities and their broader benefits. Goal III: Broaden interest and awareness of Earth observations support to the SDGs and social, environmental, and economic benefits.

GI-18: Draft Implementation Plan Focus Preliminary Assessments guiding GI-18 implementation. Most likely Targets and Indicators that Earth obs. can contribute to (directly or indirectly) Alignments of the Goals with specific types of Earth obs. and geospatial info. draft This can be included in the Extra Slides (or at the end of this session)

How EO will respond to these goals

Sustainable Development Goals With different observations platforms, there are tradeoffs in: - Coverage Precision Accuracy Frequency Repair/maintenance Etc.

Global and national information & trends

Indicators 15.5.1 and 15.5.2 Target 11.5 By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations 11.5.1 Number of deaths, missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 people 11.5.2 Direct disaster economic loss in relation to global GDP, including disaster damage to critical infrastructure and disruption of basic services No contribution from EO to measure indicators but Fundamental contributions to actually have the indicators going down

How AfriGEOSS will assist to achieve these goals and how the AfriGEOSS framework will be of benefit to Africa, as a one-stop-shop for EO initiatives in the continent

Importance of Earth Observations for Africa world’s second largest continent (30.2 m km2) including islands second most populous continent (about 15% of the world’s population) has a vast land area with difficult terrain (deserts, rainforest, inland water bodies, complex and inhomogeneous topography, the Great Rift Valley Satellite observations are critical to support environment and natural resources management for protection of life and property and sustainable socio-economic development of Africa. Europe China Argentina India United States of America New Zealand

AfriGEOSS and the Sustainable Development Goals With different observations platforms, there are tradeoffs in: - Coverage Precision Accuracy Frequency Repair/maintenance Etc.

103 Members

103 Participating Organizations

AfriGEOSS – Coordinating EO Efforts in Africa Developing information systems for coordination - 3W’s Who is doing What Where Conducting Advocacy - influence policy and decisions Mainstreaming EO into other cluster/sectors - promote multi-sectoral, interagency action to use EO to inform, implement and monitor policies Conducting assessments, data collection, monitoring, and knowledge management - ensures priorities identified by partners are evidence-based Supporting development of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) - such as data management, validation of land cover products etc. Building capacity of partners - collaborative process building on existing strengths and capacities Developing information, education, and communication materials - raise awareness Resource mobilization - support coordination activities and partner programs

AfriGEOSS Action Areas AfriGAM The AfriGEOSS Implementation Plan identified 6 Action Areas, namely ….

Data & Infrastructure Coordination Team Support EO data (satellite & in-situ) access and dissemination in Africa by identification existing infrastructure, gaps and recommend actions for the community to implement. Undertake a SWOT analysis of African EO infrastructure (data receiving, data processing, data archiving, and data distribution) Resource optimization of existing EO infrastructure Identify and exploit other continental infrastructure that enable EO data access and dissemination - e.g. Africa Data Intensive Research Cloud Develop action plan towards building EO infrastructures that respond to gaps Advocate for free and open access of African owned data African Space Policy & Strategy The work required in this task is big, hence we have decided to start with access to satellite data, to ensure the released free and open satellite data becomes accessible to Africa – beyond the policy level. This work will contribute to the implementation of the African Space Policy and Strategy under approval. ” ACCESSING SPACE SERVICES…. ensure optimal access to space-derived data, information services and products ”

The Value of Open Data Sharing Economic Growth Social Welfare Research & Innovation Education Capacity Development Effective Governance & Policy Making

Challenges Limitations of existing observing systems: Inadequate spatial density of in situ observations Limitations in data coverage (temporal and spatial) Actual access to data and information remain critical Integration of Earth Observation (environmental) data with socio- economic data Bridging the gaps between the EO community and the Statistical community Lack of standards, best practices, common units of measurement, quality control procedures, universal formats and clear data policy

Take-away messages Earth Observations can contribution substantially to the achievement of the SDGs and to the monitoring of the progress against the agreed targets. AfriGEOSS framework provides for coordination and sharing of resouces GEO through AfriGEOSS can provide Strong advocacy of Open Data policies Access to Earth observation data through GEOSS DAB and ADIRC A framework and pilot projects for actual use of EOs to achieve or monitor the SDGs. GEO seeks partners in Africa especially statistical agencies to develop and test EO methods for SDG Targets and Indicators