The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and Africa has been delivering on its Pan African mandate of strengthening the capacities of African institutions with the required resources for access to and exploitation of earth observation (EO) based services, particularly in water and natural resources, and marine and coastal area domains.
This is in line with the African Union Agenda 2063 and the African Space Policy and Strategy that advocate for the promotion of environmentally sustainable and climate resilient economies and communities.
The GMES & Africa initiative has been providing information to key stakeholders including policy makers, scientists, businesses, academia and end users, through consortia of institutions implementing EO services and natural resource management projects across the five regions of Africa. Whereas, once every two years, GMES & Africa brings all its stakeholders together through a forum, the participants ought to re-think how to integrate climate governance into the earth observation ecosystem.
As the world of space evolves, policy makers have to recognise the need to integrate facets of geospatial technologies, earth observation technologies and satellite imagery within the climate governance framework.
The agility for adaption and deployment of EO technologies cannot be left to the millennial generation alone but all and sundry have to device ways to embrace and cope with it. This necessitates that leaders rethink their boardroom agenda and constantly include the EO technological agenda and how the technologies can be integrated within the climate justice processes as well as agree to what level institutionally.
This implies that leaders and their teams can design earth observation implementation plans that align the African Space Policy and Strategy. The plan ought to incorporate the right combination of complementary and creative talented individuals within teams to champion the implementation.
While it is important to have visionary and inspiring leaders, the dichotomy of EO implementation requires personnel with in-depth comprehension of both the mechanics of the business, as well as expertise of the relevant EO technologies that will drive and achieve the intended results of climate governance, whereas embodying customer-centricity, collaborative mind-sets, that encompass environment, social and corporate governance within the public, private partnership dichotomy.
Additionally, resource allocation is a key lever for leaders to successfully drive the next level of EO community transformation. Leaders have to provide a detailed resource allocation strategy that indicates the components and phases of institutional EO implementation strategies and framework that are sustainable for futuristic transformational processes, both in terms of finances and human capital.
This necessitates that leaders agree on the legacy resource allocation ratios to put in place as well mechanisms to employ to monitor the resources allocated for the processes. In regards to human capital, the level of competencies need to be audited and continuously assessed.
Persons with disabilities also ought to be incorporated within the institutional EO development and implementation plans so as to enhance and promote inclusion and accessibility. This is with the appreciation that climate injustice does not discriminate,thus EO technologies have to be made accessible for all.
Conclusively, earth observation for resilient and innovative climate governance in Africa necessitates global leaders to embrace the digital age challenge as an opportunity to thrive and drive continental, country and community/institutional operations more effectively and effectively. In the long run, the deployment of earth observation technologies for ambitious climate action may be the ultimate driver for the realisation of the African Union Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan (2022-2032). Looking ahead, leaders ought to be versatile to explore and experiment options and alternatives being provided by earth observation technologies for climate intelligent solutions.
Writer is communication and public policy analyst
