UN Specialized and associated Agencies
The United Nations specialized agencies are international organizations working with the UN, in accordance with relationship agreements between each organization and the UN.
FAO
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) considers climate change a top-line corporate priority. Its strategy on climate change translates its core mandate into strategic choices and action priorities at global, regional, national and local levels with the central goal of supporting its members in achieving their commitments regarding climate change.
FAO has joined forces with UNDP and UNEP within the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Programme. To help practitioners to put national forest monitoring systems in place, FAO has developed a free, open-source system for Earth observations, data access processing and analysis for land monitoring: Open Foris and System for Earth Observation Data Access, Processing and Analysis for Land Monitoring (SEPAL: https://sepal.io/ ), which uses satellite imagery for natural resource management.
IPCC
The objective of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is to provide Governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC provides regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.
The IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/2019-refinement-to-the-2006-ipcc-guidelines-for-national-greenhouse-gas-inventories/) include information on the potential contributions of space-based Earth observations for comparison with greenhouse gas emission estimates. Parties to the Convention have agreed to use the IPCC Guidelines in reporting to the Convention. Furthermore, the recent IPCC special reports have pointed out that the expanded use of new information and communication technologies, climate services and remote sensing is critical for near-term actions for capacity-building, as well as technology transfer and deployment to strengthen adaptation and mitigation.
UNFCCC
The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change and provides organizational support and technical expertise to negotiations and institutions of the Convention and facilitates the flow of authoritative information on the implementation of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
SBSTA (https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/subsidiary-bodies/sbsta?black=j&bodies_reports%5B0%5D=topic%3A3347&bodies_documents%5B0%5D=document_type%3A3504&order=field_document_attachments_1&sort=asc&page=%2C%2C%2C0%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C%2C0%2C3 ), the Subsidiary Body for Science and Technological Advice, one of two permanent subsidiary bodies to the Convention established by the Conference of the Parties, has been increasingly emphasizing the value of systematic observations, a term that encompasses Earth observations in the context of the Convention due to their importance for the work of IPCC.
WMO
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is the co-custodian of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate action. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is the co-custodian of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 on climate action.
Recognizing the growing importance of data collected by space-based systems, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) established in 2003 the WMO Space Programme (https://public.wmo.int/en/programmes/wmo-space-programme) . The overall goal of the Programme is to achieve maximum benefits from Earth information satellites for WMO applications.
Moreover, WMO and the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS CGMS – Website – The Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (cgms-info.org)) initiated in 2005 the Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (GSICS: Home | GSICS (wmo.int)), an international collaborative effort (currently with 18 entities) to monitor, improve and harmonize the quality of observations from operational weather and environmental satellites. GSICS aims at ensuring consistent accuracy among space-based observations worldwide for climate monitoring, weather forecasting and environmental applications.
WBG
The World Bank Group sees climate action as fundamental to alleviating poverty and boosting shared prosperity and has published its Climate Change Action Plan (World Bank Group Climate Change Action Plan 2021–2025 : Supporting Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development) to guide its interventions from 2021 to 2025.
The World Bank Groups’s Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP) is a platform for climate-related information, data and tools. Developed to service the needs of expert and non-expert users, the Portal provides global data on past climate and future climate change projections, as well as socioeconomic data to support users in their climate-resilient decision-making. The European Space Agency (ESA) worked with WBG in providing Earth observation services to the CCKP Earth Observation data for the Climate Change Knowledge Portal (CCKP) | PreventionWeb and on the Earth Observation for Sustainable Development Climate Resilience (EO4SD-CR https://eo4sd-climate.gmv.com/ ) cluster, to identify Earth observation data that could be seamlessly integrated into the existing architecture for instant access by users, as well as gain insight about the potential of Earth observation data to support climate-resilient decision-making at regional and national levels.