German Government supports independent European Programme on Environment Monitoring and Observation

Government provides 19 Million Euro / Conference opened in Bonn

Europeans are setting up an independent programme to monitor the environment and to collect global environment data. The project (GMES) is geared towards a supporting a precautionary European environment policy, the prevention of disasters and the provision of disaster relief in crisis situations such as natural disasters. To promote the project the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing in Bonn today opened a congress entitled "Global Monitoring for Environment and Security" (GMES). At the 2-day conference more than 100 experts form industry, science, government and Länder authorities and different organisations involved in development assistance and civil protection discuss the strategic and political perspectives of GMES.

After the satellite navigation system Galileo, GMES is the second joint project of the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA). The goal of this project is to establish independent European capacity for global monitoring of environment and security. In contrast to Galileo, GMES will also use data collected by airplanes, ships and terrestrial monitoring networks.

"Within GMES we integrate different monitoring systems into a comprehensive European monitoring system," said Wolf-Dieter Dudenhausen, State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Research. "Europe will thus be able to have independent access to environment data at any given time and obtain a comprehensive overview even in case of natural disasters. GMES is a good example of bringing space technology from pure research to the application stage".

Margareta Wolf, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Environment Ministry: "Global monitoring is a core element of international environment policy. We are establishing an effective instrument to recognise threats early on and help prevent potential damage to the environment. Within the project we are setting up a European-wide warning system which provides us with information on risks such as maritime pollution, floods and forest fires."

Iris Gleicke, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing on this event: "It is important that we know more about the earth. The future monitoring system will provide us with information on the state of our planet and its elements water, soil, atmosphere and on on-going developments. This will help us to better understand vital environmental and economic issues".

Under its 6th Framework Programme for Research the European Commission will make approx. 100 million Euro available for the establishment of GMES. Another 83 million Euro are provided by the European Space Agency (ESA), approx. 19 million Euro of which come from the German government. German industry is strongly involved in the establishment of GMES services in the framework of project consortia. The initial services provided on a Europe-wide basis are routine monitoring of forests, soil sealing and maritime pollution and early warning systems informing about the risk of floods and forest fires. Germany, inter alia, participates in land use monitoring projects. After the Bonn GMES conference, landmark decisions are to be taken in the European Parliament in spring 2004 on the further development of this independent programme.