UAE- Eye on Earth Summit calls for practical action to support 2030 sustainable development agenda

ABU DHABI 13th October 2015 (WAM) -- The second Eye on Earth Summit has concluded with a commitment from delegates to implement a number of mechanisms recommendations and practical actions around the supply demand and enabling conditions of data considered essential to support informed decision-making and the 2030 sustainable development agenda. These include addressing the data needs of specific geographic regions how to harness big data for sustainable development building capacity for how best to use this data when reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs and ensuring that countries have the technological infrastructure and skillsets in place to incorporate such data into their decision-making processes.

The summit also highlighted the important role of citizen science and it was agreed that a global coalition of citizen science groups will be established by the Eye on Earth Alliance to continue to engage citizens science groups so that new data can be generated in areas where gaps are evident.

"The summit outcomes are central to advancing Eye on Earth's vision of achieving a world where environmental and associated social and economic information combined with citizen engagement improves decisions leading to sustainable development" said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak Secretary-General of the Environment AgencyAbu Dhabi a founding partner of Eye on Earth. "They will make a direct contribution towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and also crucially help to monitor progress through quality reporting."

The recent adoption of the 2030 sustainable development agenda at the UN Summit in New York has generated renewed interest in addressing the enormous challenge of identifying and delivering the data needed to track the SDGs on a global scale and sharing knowledge among stakeholders engaged in the implementation of the 2030 agenda. The summit generated incisive debate among leading experts.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said "We have a collective responsibility to make sure that the post-2015 development agenda is delivered. Getting citizens and businesses to engage in this global agenda will be vital. Fortunately there is a vast number of new and innovative ways to involve citizens and business in monitoring and generating information and to track progress.

"At the Eye on Earth Summit we have seen many great examples of citizen science and engagement. UNEP is helping to capture these in cutting edge digital collaborative spaces such as The World We Want engaging people in the development goals and UNEP Live collecting processing and sharing the world's best environmental data science and knowledge" he added.

The Eye on Earth Alliance partners also agreed to formalise a governance framework and institutional arrangements by the end of 2015. The five existing members - AGEDI GEO IUCN UNEP and WRIannounced plans to enlarge the alliance strategically to support regional and thematic interests. By the close of the summit they had received six expressions of interest from major organisations around the world to join the alliance.