More than 100 participants from the North and the South of the Mediterranean,
the European Space Agency, the European Commission and the European Science
Foundation, participated actively in the Colloquium. Various sessions were
devoted to present current experience acquired from satellite applications
for sustainable development, technologies and space programmes available,
new programmes as well as new opportunities which will be offered to the
users. The final round table had to identify possible initiatives for meeting
institutional, science and research needs in the Mediterranean region.
The debate started from an attempt to summarise the outcome of the two
days intense discussions, which indicated that:
- there is a clear political will to address the issue of sustainable development of the Mediterranean area and a recognition that space remote sensing technology is a valuable and promising tool to this end.
- there are a number of initiatives at national, multilateral and European level to tackle important problems like environment, natural resources, natural hazards, research linked to the Mediterranean ecosystem, etc.
- technology at hand both in terms of space segment and ground infrastructure, but equally in terms of models and tools is considered satisfactory and adequate for supporting specific actions.
- industry and institutional organisations are already actively working on the design of second generation systems in the field of EO from space more adapted to perceived user needs and more cost effective to offer better prospects to sustainability.
- the European Earth science research community is working at national and continental levels to address, in particular, the key environmental issues of the Mediterranean ecosystem such as anthropological pressure on the environment, over-exploitation of water resources, desertification, natural hazards including fire, flooding, seismic, volcanic events, etc.
- initiatives are taken not only by countries bordering the north of the Mediterranean (Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey) but equally from the south side notably Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, etc.
The expression of a political willingness in the context of the dialogue established between the European Union and the countries of the South rim of the Mediterranean, is probably the best chance to make a real use of these technologies which are now available and which will be improved and simplified in the coming years for the real benefit of all the countries of the region.
It is the role of EURISY to assemble users and providers of data, industrialists
as well as politicians, to help them to understand each other and to develop
a real synergy between different categories of people who are not accustomed
to working together but who need to co-operate to reap the benefits of
new technologies available, at reasonable cost, and to contribute to the
sustainable development which the governments indicate as being their target.
On the request of participants at the Colloquium, it is suggested to organise
a follow-up to this Colloquium, on the same theme.
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