GEMS is an established, operational fact, a fact that has been with us for ten years. In 1975, following the instructions of the UN Conference on the Human Environment, UNEP moved into the field of environmental monitoring by establishing at its Nalrobi Headquaters a Programme Activity Centre for GEMS. The role given to this Programme Activity Centre is to co-ordinate the disparate international monitoring activities that are conducted thoughout the world, particulary within the UN system, and to advise the Environment Fund of UNEP on how best to support and stimulate the initiation of new activities or the expansion of ongoing ones through the allocation of financial resources to these activities.
The data gathered within the GEMS networks are used for assessment of the state of the environment and its trends, for better, more rational management of the environment and its natural resources. Ten years after it began the United Nations GEMS effort can be seen to be both fully operational and global in scope.
The Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) is a collective effort of the world community to acquire the information needed to investigate environmental processes through monitoring, and thus to understand and manage the environment and to prevent its degradation.
This much is often said but many people do not realize that GEMS is not just an idea. It is an established, operational fact, a fact, moreover, that has been with us for ten years. In May 1985 at the twelfth session of the UNEP Governing Council in Nairobi, GEMS officially celebrated its tenth anniversary in an impressive, unique special occasion at which Soviet cosmonaut Anatoli Berezovoi and American astronaut George Nelson shared the same platform to describe their views and feelings on seeing our planet in its entirety from space. Anatoli Berezovoi you will remeber spent over seven months in space while George Nelson was one of the first to fly untethered away from the mother ship thus becoming a free satellite of earth in his own right. Both men painted vivid and moving pictures of the earth including descriptions of forest clearings, ocean dumping of waste, dust clouds over the ocean, and vast industrial emission plumes. Both men came back convinced that we had to have a proper understanding of what is happening to the environment of our planet before it is too late. GEMS helps to obtain this understanding.
It was in 1975, following the instruction of the UN Conference on the Human Environment, that UNEP moved into the field of environmental monitoring by establishing at its Nairobi Headquarters a Programme Activity Centre for GEMS. The role given to this Programme Activity Centre by Governments is to co-ordinate the disparate international monitoring and assessment activities that are conducted throughout the world, particularly within the UN system, and to advise the Environment Fund of UNEP on how best to support and stimulate the initiation of new