Developing national early warning systems for food

This strategy features in the framework of Agenda 21 as formulated at UNCED (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), now coordinated by the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development and implemented through national and local authorities. Agenda 21 recommends supporting FAO programmes and other programmes for the development of national early-warning systems and food security assistance schemes.

In the field of environmental monitoring, since 1988 FAO has been operating the Africa Real Time Environmental Monitoring Information System (ARTEMIS) in support of its Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) on Food and Agriculture. ARTEMIS supports the operational monitoring of seasonal growing conditions and vegetation development on a global basis, based on hourly Meteosat and daily SPOT-4 VEGETATION and NOAA-AVHRR data. Specifically, the information is provided for use in global early warning for food security, crop forecasting, desert locust control, animal health and transboundary livestock diseases monitoring and water resources management and forestry applications. In December 1999, FAO signed a formal Agreement with NASA concerning the joint development of the use of Terra-MODIS data in various areas of FAO's mandate through the facilities of the ARTEMIS system.