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4. Moving towards a Digital FAO
Currently, FAO is developing a Strategic Framework of the
Organisation. One of the five corporate strategies pro-
posed for the period of 2000-2015 states “improving deci-
sion-making through the provision of information and
assessments and fostering of knowledge management for
food and agriculture”. This strategy has a focus on devel-
oping an integrated information resource base, with cur-
rent, relevant and reliable statistics, information and
knowledge to be made accessible to the international
community and all FAO clients.
Accordingly, efforts have been made to develop an envi-
ronmental geo-spatial information infrastructure to facili-
tate services in the use of remote sensing, GIS and
agrometeorology and GTOS as decision-support tools for
the Organisation and its Members in monitoring of envi-
ronmental changes and environmental impact assess-
ment, crop modelling, agricultural disaster management
and inventorying and management of natural resources at
various levels for food security and sustainable agricul-
ture.
Increasingly involved in information and communication
technologies applications, FAO is progressively moving
towards the digital age by developing a World Agricultural
Information Centre (WAICENT) and various corporate digi-
tal spatial databases. Through world-wide networking,
FAO aims to expand the outreaches of its products and
services to reach the unreached, in order to help its Mem-
ber nations to design and implement national policies and
strategies on food security and sustainable agricultural
development. A digital FAO will, no doubt, not only
improve the availability, but also increase the accessibility
of data and information for decision-making by various
stakeholders, and greatly facilitate awareness creation
among various end-users. In the long run, FAO will con-
tribute, based on its comparative advantage, to the
process of a digital Earth, in particular, in the context of the
operational use of new and emerging information and
communication technology for managing agricultural infor-
mation for sustainable agricultural development.
Concluding Remarks
Agriculture in the 21st century will be an information-inten-
sive sector of a global knowledge-based economy. Sus-
tainable agriculture is of multi-functionality. As addressing
sustainability issues normally starts with information, com-
prehensive agricultural information concerning physical,
ecological, environmental, social and economic parame-
ters, as well as human dynamics, are essential. Clearly,
information technology, including tele-communication,
International Archives of Photogrammerty and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part A. Amsterdam 2000. ————————————————
computer and Internet technologies will revolutionalise the
agriculture production and management systems. The use
of spatial information and appropriate decision-support
tools will be the keys in raising awareness, reaching con-
sensus and decision-making and planning on wide range
sustainability issues. The technology has become indis-
pensable for evaluating conditions of ecosystems, moni-
toring trends and progress, assessing scenarios and plan-
ning policy responses to environmental pressures.
The international communities, UN agencies, NGOs and
government agencies have already realised the impor-
tance of information and the power of decision-support
tools. Some have made improvements in their ability to
provide their stakeholders with an access to their informa-
tion and service. Yet, many organisations still struggle with
how to collect, transform and transmit information to their
clients. It has also been recognised that policies, politics,
budgetary and institutional restraints, as well as poor com-
munication and co-ordination among various players have
resulted in the isolation of information within the "silos" of
individual organisations. The resultant negative impacts
includes inefficient capacities, overlapping initiatives,
unhealthy competition or conflict of interest between
agencies with common goals and often, a waste of scarce
resources. What is in urgent need is a collective response
by the concerned organisations — UN, NGOs and govern-
ments, to map out a common agenda on information tech-
nology for all, in particular for those at the local level who
are lacking in capacity, enabling institutional settings and
adequate resources. The investment required to fully
employ information technology, develop products and
serve applications, is too great a challenge for any single
organisation to realise from its own resources. As a way
forward, there should be cohesive and coordinated poli-
cies and programmes on the development of spatial infor-
mation infrastructure to narrow the information divide and
improve service. It is time to call for a collective effort
among various stakeholders to fill the "last mileage infor-
mation gap" at the local level.
Reference
1. FAO: Space-related Activities of the Food and Agricul-
ture Organisation of the United Nations. UNISPACE III
A/CONF.184/1GO/7, July 1999, Vienna;
2. He Changchui: Integrated Global Observing Strategy -
Putting The Vision Of Digital Earth Into Actions by Inter-
national Communities. Proceedings of the International
Symposium on Digital Earth, November 29 to Decem-
ber 2,1999, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.
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