Gmes For Africa

THE GMES PROGRAM

GMES is the most ambitious operational Earth Observation programme to date. Alongside with Galileo, it represents of the EU flagship programs, aiming to assure European independence in data sources for environment and security monitoring. It will provide a global, timely and easily accessible range of thematic information services which fall in six main domains: services forland management, services for the marine environment, services relating to the atmosphere, services to aid emergency response, services associated with security and services relating to climate change.

The GMES program is headed by the EU Commission (EC), in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Environment Agency (EEA). Other Partners of the program are Eumetsat andsome National Space Agency, like ASI, BNSC, CDTI, CNES, CSA, DLR.
While the EC is responsible for the overall initiative, setting requirements and managing the services, ESA is responsible for the management of the manufacturing, the data delivery and for the space component in its pre-operational stages.
ESA is now developing five families of Sentinel missions specifically for GMES, the firstof which is scheduled to launch in 2013. The Sentinels will provide a unique set of observations for GMES. Sentinel-1 has an all-weather, day-and-night radar imager; Sentinel-2 is equipped with an optical payload which will deliver high-resolution optical images for land services and Sentinel-3 will provide data for services relevant to the ocean and land. Sentinel-4 and Sentinel-5 will providedata for atmospheric composition monitoring from geostationary and polar orbits, respectively. The ground segment, facilitating access to Sentinel and Contributing Mission data, completes the GMES Space Component.[1] ESA and the European Commission plan to build three copies of each Sentinel satellite to assure data continuity and reduce the capital investment in satellite hardware.

A ProblematicProgram
To date, ESA and EC have already financed more than 3 billion euros on the early development of GMES, in preparation for the Commission's expected takeover as part of the European Union's 2014-2020 budget.
The European Commission promised to secure GMES funding at 5.8 billion euros between 2014 and 2020 inside the so called Horizon 2020, the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) packagewhich covers EU spending between that period.
But the financial crisis which affects most of EU Nations made the Commission's early intentions less achievable. As a matter of facts, in June 2011 the Commission decided to remove the program from the MFF as a budget-saving gesture.
Since the removal decision, GMES existence became seriously threatened and despite the protests and pressures ofESA officials and EU major space nations, the EC has not to date been able to reinsert GMES in Horizon 2020. The proposal recently adopted by the General Affairs Council identifies several possible scenarios for GMES. In the first one, the program will be funded inside the MFF. In another, it will be funded by all EU nations, by mandatory contributions, but outside the multiannual. package.
Today,the Commission's orientation is to put the funding mechanism outside the 7 year budget, for instance inside an IGA.
ESA senior officials have no objection in principle, but it is clear that this solution would delay or even stop the program for months, and possibly years, while in the meantime GMES operations are funded only to mid-2014.
Although nothing definitive about what is inside oroutside the MFF will be decided until there is full agreement on the entire package (at least until early 2103, if not later), it is clear that, being most of the MFF money already committed, the margins for GMES to be inside the MFF are becoming smaller and smaller.


INDIRECT BENEFITS FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Remote sensing activities that will be provided by GMES are in compliance not only with...