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NASA's Eyes in the Sky to Help Global Conservation (and the IUCN)
Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 11/18/04 | Karishma Vyas - Reuters

Posted on 11/18/2004 6:34:50 AM PST by NormsRevenge

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Space agency NASA (news - web sites), which first put man on the moon, will now help to map the Earth in the name of conservation, the agency announced on Thursday.

Missed Tech Tuesday? Today, satellite radio is all the rage. But do you choose XM or Sirius?

NASA and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) signed an agreement to use the space agency's satellite system to monitor global environment change in the hope of preserving the planet.

"The mission of NASA is to understand and protect our home planet Earth and also to use its space-based observation to serve humanity," Dr. Ghassem Asrar, NASA's deputy associate administrator for science, told reporters in the Thai capital.

"What better way to serve humanity than to help understand how our home is changing and what the consequences of that change are for us and for our children," he said.

The IUCN, which is the world's largest environmental umbrella group, said the remote-sensing technology would revolutionise the conservation struggle.

"The potential for the beneficial use of this information in the area of the environment and conservation is enormous," said Achim Steiner, IUCN's director-general.

"Yet until now, it has remained largely untapped, particularly in the developing world," he said.

Asrar said NASA's 30 research satellites in orbit would be focused on monitoring natural and man-made changes around the world and assessing their impact.

The satellites, worth an estimated $14 billion, promise to chart a new frontier in conservation by discovering unknown species of plants and animals, and pin-pointing their habitats.

"There are about 30 million species on the planet. We have only managed to identify two million of them and out of that we know the habitats of just one out of every ten," said Asrar.

"NASA can help close some of these gaps. We can now examine every habitat for every species around the world based on this satellite observation and do it seamlessly on a daily basis," he told Reuters.

NASA said it is keen to share its space technology with communities around the world, a notion that would have been unthinkable just 30 years ago during the height of the Cold War.

"One of the benefits of these 21st Century technologies is that they have brought us all together," said Asrar.

"We no longer view ourselves as citizens of countries alone, we see ourselves as citizens of the globe," he said.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Foreign Affairs; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: conservation; eyes; global; iucn; nasa
What's an IUCN?

Thanks for asking. :-]

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IUCN is a unique Union. Its members from some 140 countries include 77 States, 114 government agencies, and 800-plus NGOs. More than 10,000 internationally-recognised scientists and experts from more than 180 countries volunteer their services to its six global commissions. Its 1000 staff members in offices around the world are working on some 500 projects.

For more than 50 years this ‘Green Web’ of partnerships has generated environmental conventions, global standards, scientific knowledge and innovative leadership.

1 posted on 11/18/2004 6:34:51 AM PST by NormsRevenge
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Building IUCN's New Programme for 2005 to 2008

In November 2004 IUCN Members will convene in Bangkok, Thailand at the World Conservation Congress (WCC) where, amongst other things, they will consider and approve the programme and financial plan. Once approved, the programme and financial plan becomes the framework for the IUCN Intersessional Programme or more simply the ‘IUCN Programme’.

During 2003 the IUCN Secretariat and Commissions worked together with Members and partners to update the IUCN Programme and to prepare intersessional plans for each component programme (regional programmes, Commission programmes, global thematic programmes).

DRAFT

IUCN is first and foremost a union of members that are concerned with species loss and ecosystem integrity. However, IUCN recognises that the causes of environmental problems are largely political, economic and social. Thus, the IUCN Programme 2005–2008 recognises a need for the Union to simultaneously focus on the direct and underlying causes of biodiversity loss. The 2005–2008 Programme equally recognises the link between environmental health and human wellbeing and explicitly seeks to address the elements of the UN Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit on Sustainable Development’s Johannesburg Plan of Implementation that relate to the environment-development nexus.

The Programme is described in terms of the three ‘pillars’ of sustainable development – economic, social and environmental – and it explicitly seeks to improve the attention of decision makers on the role of a healthy environment in sustainability by expanding the role of the environment in sustainable development. The Programme recognises that sustainable development will ultimately depend on the condition of the natural environment and it challenges whether current approaches to sustainable development actually achieve sustainability.

2 posted on 11/18/2004 6:39:50 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... The War on Terrorism is the ultimate 'faith-based' initiative.)
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What are the goals of the UN Millennium Development Goals, you ask?

Millennium Development Goals: Progress Report (2004) (PDF)

3 posted on 11/18/2004 6:42:15 AM PST by NormsRevenge (Semper Fi ...... The War on Terrorism is the ultimate 'faith-based' initiative.)
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To: NormsRevenge

Hey, IUCN, I'll make you deal. You stay out of my property, and I'll stay out of your stupid, left wing, eco-fascist bureaucratic face.

When is Congress going to start ripping these rat bureaucrats out by the roots?


4 posted on 11/18/2004 6:54:47 AM PST by sergeantdave (More liberal turkeys will be steamed this month than real turkeys baked.)
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To: sergeantdave

What the he**...NASA is funded thru US taxpayer $$'s and has become an ally of the fraud enviro-whacks. Somethin' seriously wrong with this agency. Time to do a Goss on them!


5 posted on 11/18/2004 7:11:46 AM PST by iopscusa (El Vaquero)
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