October 26, 2018

World Policy Conference - Space now and in the future at 11th edition in Rabat

Friday 26 October, CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall was at the 11th World Policy Conference (WPC) in Rabat, Morocco, where he took part in a discussion with Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post. The event was opened by His Majesty Mohammed VI, King of Morocco, Amadou Gon Coulibaly, Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, and Thierry de Montbrial, President and Founder of WPC. During the discussion, Jean-Yves Le Gall emphasized innovation, climate and exploration, the three challenges facing space today and in the years ahead.

Innovation is integral to space policies being pursued around the world today. It is something that has been inscribed in CNES’s genes since its inception, enabling France and Europe to keep pace with competition from new players in the sector. As a result, space technologies are fuelling applications in many domains, serving the needs of citizens in such areas as healthcare, security, agriculture, fisheries, land planning and weather forecasting to name a few.

Climate monitoring and efforts to tackle climate change are today the centre of attention. On 12 December 2015, 195 nations signed up to the Paris Agreement to limit their greenhouse gas emissions with a view to keeping the rise in global temperature to within 1.5°C. Since this milestone event, French President Emmanuel Macron has launched the One Planet Summit, the first two editions of which—in Paris and New York—have highlighted the crucial role of satellites in taking up the challenge of the century. In this regard, CNES is a climate-focused space agency and has made this cause a priority, as shown by its numerous international partnerships and the launch of the Space Climate Observatory (SCO) last year.

Space exploration is the central thread guiding CNES’s actions this year, marked by three major missions: Hayabusa2-MASCOT to study asteroid Ryugu, BepiColombo, now en route to Mercury, and InSight-SEIS, set to land on Mars on 26 November. And there will be more to come in the years ahead, with ExoMars 2020 through ESA and Mars 2020 with NASA.

In conclusion, Jean-Yves Le Gall underlined the strength of space cooperation between France and Morocco. The two nations have forged close ties in recent years, as a result of which the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) will be organizing a symposium on the theme of water at the end of April 2019.

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CONTACTS
Pascale Bresson    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 75 39    pascale.bresson@cnes.fr
Raphaël Sart    Press Officer    Tel: +33 (0)1 44 76 74 51    raphael.sart@cnes.fr

cp169-2018_-_wpc_va.pdf (pdf - 114.24 KB)
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