World Officials Agree to Share Ecology Data 

ANDREW C. REVKIN / NY Times 1aug03

WASHINGTON, July 31 — Officials from more than 30 countries agreed today to expand monitoring of the atmosphere, the oceans and the land and to create a system for sharing the resulting data.

At a meeting here organized by the Bush administration, the officials said the goal of the 10-year effort was to fill in big gaps, primarily in developing countries, in the network of instruments recording earth's vital signs. The resulting benefits, like better crop and weather forecasts, are to be shared by rich and poor countries alike.

Such a system was made possible by the explosion of the Internet and advances in monitoring technology, participants said, and it was necessitated by climate shifts and stresses on agriculture, water supplies and ecosystems.

"Whether we're talking about geophysics or geopolitics, our 21st-century world is profoundly interconnected," said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, one of four participating Bush cabinet secretaries.

"We all need a better understanding of the earth and its systems," he said. "Just think how a farmer in East Africa or a forest manager in the southwestern United States could benefit from access to improved forecasting of rains or drought conditions."

He and many other participants said an integrated "earth observation system" would reduce damage from storms, bolster food supplies, better protect threatened wild areas and provide a clearer view of the causes and risks of global warming.

Most of the participating countries, which ranged in size and power from Germany to Gabon, credited the Bush administration for pushing the project even though they differ with President Bush over global warming, the most contentious international environmental issue right now.

Mr. Bush has rejected the Kyoto Protocol, the first binding treaty that would limit heat-trapping greenhouse gases linked to rising temperatures, while most of the participating countries have already ratified it.

The meeting grew in part out of commitments by Mr. Bush and leaders of other big industrialized nations at a summit meeting in France in June to build an integrated global environmental monitoring system. But they have yet to commit the money that would be necessary.

At the meeting here, administration officials said Mr. Bush had committed $25 million as a matching contribution to help developing countries link up to the global network for tracking what Donald L. Evans, the commerce secretary, called "the heartbeat of Mother Earth."