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2010 Task Force prepares for Beijing Summit
The second meeting of the GEO 2010 Summit Task Force was held on 2 and 3 February 2010 in Geneva. China reported that the first invitation letter to Ministers had been finalized. The letter was sent out to the 24 ministers identified by GEO Principals a few days ago; for the other Members, the letter will be addressed to foreign affairs ministers. The China National Convention Center was confirmed as the Summit venue.
The showcases
The participants held an extensive debate on the 19 proposed showcases that had been submitted by the GEO Committees, the Task Force itself, and others. In an effort to narrow the list down, the meeting assessed the maturity of the Tasks underlying each proposed showcase, their political relevance and profile, and their breadth or narrowness. Some of the proposals, it was felt, would be more effective if presented in other ways, for example as part of the exhibition.
Based on this, the list was revised to include the following six potential showcases: End-to-end capacity building, the global carbon tracking system, the geohazards supersites, the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network, health services, and a regional showcase from Asia.
While confirming the value of showcases, the meeting agreed that they should be introduced at the Ministerial by some kind of general presentation on GEO. This presentation and/or document should highlight GEO’s accomplishments, its future perspectives, and its role as a coordination mechanism that is based on the infrastructure of its Members and Participating Organizations. The aim would be to tell a comprehensive story about GEOSS and its importance to policy-making for environment and natural resources.
The meeting decided that it would be more appropriate to address data sharing, which was highlighted in the Cape Town Declaration, through the Beijing Declaration and other means rather than featuring it as a showcase.
The proponents of the six potential showcases have been invited to present revised proposals that could in their final form be presented as two-page papers for the Ministers.
The GEO-VII exhibition will also be useful for highlighting GEO’s many achievements. In addition to the traditional bottom-up approach through which past exhibitions have been developed, whereby countries and organizations organized their own individual stands to highlight their voluntary contributions, the Task Force suggested exploring the possibility of orchestrating cross-cutting stands for SBAs, Tasks, showcases, and so forth.
The draft Declaration
A draft Beijing Declaration has been prepared by the host country. The Task Force is elaborating a second draft that will be forwarded to the Executive Committee for comment at its March meeting. Recognizing that it can take up to three rounds and six months for governments to negotiate a Declaration text, the aim is to distribute the final draft version to GEO Principals by late April. China, supported by the Secretariat, will collate and integrate the comments that start to come in after April.
The Task Force will continue to consult through regular teleconferences. It will hold its next meeting in several months, probably in June. The full summary report of the meeting is posted here. |
