This status enables SGAC representatives to attend UN meetings at various levels at UN Headquarters in NY.
Two SGAC delegates, Andrew Hoppin and Ulf Livoff attended the high level General Assembly meeting the 1st and 2nd of April 2008, to evaluate if attendance is beneficial to SGAC and its members and furthermore better enables SGAC to support UN activities.
Thematic Debate on Millenium Development Goals:
The so called Millennium Development Goals (MDG) are eight goals that 189 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. Since we are now halfway between 2000 (were the goals were established) and 2015, United Nations held a status meeting where the efforts to achieve the MDGs were discussed. The eight MDGs are:
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development
SGAC and the UN:
It might seem odd at first that a space related organisation such as SGAC is involved in these matters. However, the use of space technologies continues to play a large role in global development issues. Just to name a few examples:
Using remote sensing to perform environmental assesment
Using satellite imaging to generate maps of remote disaster areas
Using space based communication technologies for areas such as education
The Meeting:
The meeting was opened by General Secretary, Ban Ki-Moon and discussions followed on the topics of Poverty and hunger, Education and Health. A lot of substantial progress has been made but remarks often related to the fact that the UN initiated a lot of initiatives and triggered commitments by member states that eventually lost momentum. A lot of effort was then needed to follow up on previous commitments. This situation is in some ways similar to the challenges we have at SGAC, also a relatively loosely-knit international and multicultural organization.
Attending the meeetings was extremely inspirational and it was impressive to see the results of such high-level international cooperation. However, it also showed the difficulties in cooperaing when members have totally different approaches to cooperation and topics such as benchmarking agreed goals etc. Furthermore, many of the countries that seemed to be in the highest need of achieving the MDGs was not present at the meeting. Since this was ministerial level meeting on broad topics, the outcome itself can not directly be used by SGAC. However the learning experiences that can be brought back to SGAC by attending such meetings are invaluable.
NGO meeting:
More directly related to SGAC activities was a following meeting at the ECOSOC NGO Forum. At this meeting, Several NGOs presented their work in supporting nations achieving the MDGs. Several groups showed impressive results such helping farmers produce a 30% higher output at their farms. These NGOs were often locally based and focusing on a much narrower area than SGAC but they were at a substantially more developed stage than SGAC currently are. It would therefore be very beneficial to interact with these NGOs and use them as a role model for SGAC in the future.
By Ulf Livoff
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