Report on Advocacy Session

Wenbo ChuGEO Secretariat

7 May 2015

Common enabling elements for advocacy

• Convening power of GEO – governments, POs, emerging private sector (NGOs, Development Banks, Foundations, Commercial companies)

• The voluntary nature of organization that permits a few Members to exert leadership and support in selected areas – A forcing function on global environmental governance

• Linkages with international environmental initiatives – SDGs, WCDRR, RAMSAR, RFC etc. that permit advocacy through GEO Member States

• Leveraging and supporting the activities and initiatives of other organizations e.g. RDA, CEOS, CODATA, WMO etc.

• Delivering consistent messages throughout the community

Specific actions from the talks

• Need engagement from interest Members• Link with other organizations, e.g., addressing observation

gaps• Collect best practices/lessons learned – e.g., IGOS-P, SDGs• Monitor progress of EO related activities

– Statistics on data policy "readiness" and data availability

• Analyze impact / benefits – Mapping of Data Sets and Policy/Legal Regimes– Analysis of socio-economic benefits of OA data sharing– Analysis of data policy and data sharing in relation to the upcoming

SDGs / SBAs

• Report including through barometer style reports

Advocacy actions in Flagships, Initiatives and Community activities

• Adopt and implement GEO Data Sharing Principles • Adopt and implement Data Management Principles• Identify and fill observational gaps• Consider opportunities for citizen observations

Advocacy actions in Foundational Tasks

• Data Management Principles definition and Implementation (D-A)• Advances in Data Sharing Principles and implementation of GEO Data

Sharing Principles (D-A)• Systematic determination of user needs, observational gaps and

resources to fill them (D-A-E)• Definition of global perspectives on earth observations continuity

planning and investments (A)• Establish GEO as global authority on the value of Earth observations in

decision-making (A-E)• Promote the role of EOs and GEO in the post-2015 agenda and

Conventions (A-E)• Radio-Frequency protection (A)• Communication and Engagement (A-E)• Socio-economic value of EO (A-E-D)