Space agenda of the One Planet Summit, CNES at the conference on international cooperation towards low-emission and resilient societies

Wednesday 22 November in Bonn, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall took part in a heads of space agencies panel on the theme of Climate Change: A Global Challenge for the World and for Space. The panel was part of the conference on international cooperation towards low-emission and resilient societies, organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) and the German space agency DLR. This conference aims to contribute to UNISPACE+50 and the Space 2030 Agenda in the field of climate change actions.

Developing synergies between space-based technologies in a coordinated effort to combat climate change is one of CNES’s key priorities. In 2015, COP21 resulted in a historic universal agreement to combat global warming, a success to which CNES contributed by showing the unique role of satellites in observing and understanding the climate and in studying and forecasting climate perturbations. On 12 December, the One Planet Summit is being organized in Paris at the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron, an international event for which CNES is providing its extensive expertise.

Space agencies’ support for the Paris Agreement is reflected in the New Delhi Declaration crafted by CNES and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), through which they committed to coordinating space assets to measure greenhouse gases, while the Marrakesh Declaration discussed at COP22 is focused on water resource management. In 2015, the Mexico Declaration had enshrined space agencies’ dual mission to gain new insights into climate mechanisms and verify that nations are meeting their commitments to curbing climate change. At the One Planet Summit, CNES will be asking 60 space agencies to sign the Paris Declaration, in which the chief proposal will be the creation of a Space Climate Observatory (SCO) to better coordinate their efforts to combat climate change. This observatory will leverage the competencies of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and be showcased at the UNISPACE+50 conference in 2018.

By associating UNISPACE+50 with the 2030 Agenda and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction underline the huge contribution space is making to these initiatives. Space is a key enabler for achieving the SDGs and is helping to foster worldwide cooperation on sustainable development and climate actions.

On the sidelines of today’s conference, Jean-Yves Le Gall commented: “Today’s gathering gave us the chance to step up cooperation between our agencies on climate actions, risk reduction and disaster mitigation. The Paris Declaration was also at the centre of discussions in anticipation of its adoption at the meeting of heads of space agencies organized by CNES on the eve of the One Planet Summit.”

cp182-2017_-_dlr-unoosa_va.pdf (pdf - 126.13 KB)

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