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

2. 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.

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. 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)

6. How EO will respond to these goals

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

10. Global and national information & trends

12. Indicators and
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
Number of deaths, missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 people
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

13. 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

14. 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

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

16. 103 Members

17. 103 Participating Organizations

18. 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

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

20. 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 ”

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

23. 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

24. 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