To be held December 12-15, 2011 under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, the Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit is hosted by Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi (EAD), facilitated by Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI) and held in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Over the past ten years, the UAE has developed thought and practice leadership in the field of environmental data. In 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the UAE launched, under the guidance and patronage of His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Abu Dhabi Global Environmental Data Initiative (AGEDI) and commissioned it to help the world’s emerging economies acquire and best use environmental information.
“With the AGEDI mandate, the UAE has advocated the importance of environmental and social information gathering and access to emerging economies and the Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit places the issue on the world stage and sets an agenda for action,” said His Highness Sheikh Hamdan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler’s Representative in the Western Region and Chairman of EAD.
“The UAE government considers environmental information and collaboration on rigorous data-gathering as a crucial step toward sustainable development. The Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit underlines the importance of ensuring that this data is accessible for all those who need it. This is essential to moving the world toward a future founded on informed policy-making,” Mohammad Al Bowardi, Secretary General of the Executive Council of Abu Dhabi, Managing Director of EAD and Chairman of Eye on Earth, said.
The Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit will convene world leaders and experts in environmental and social information networking to reach consensus on solutions to greater data accessibility and encourage stakeholders to collaborate to strengthen existing data access initiatives and launch new ones. A main goal of The Summit is the environmental and social data community’s adoption of the Eye on Earth Summit Declaration – a document that will provide input to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) held in June 2012.
Confirmed attendees of the Eye on Earth Abu Dhabi 2011 Summit include UAE leadership, Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Prof. Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the European Environment Agency, Jack Dangermond, President of Esri and Lelei Lelaulu, Chairman, Foundation for the Peoples of the South Pacific International (FSPI).