SAEON – The way forward

- Prof Albert van Jaarsveld, Chairman of the SAEON Advisory Board and Dean: Faculty of Science, University of Stellenbosch

"The focus over the next few years will shift towards establishing a sustainable science plan in collaboration with the science community."

Our country's foremost environmental scientists got together to develop a core science plan for SAEON. Here Profs Albert van Jaarsveld and Bob Scholes debate a critical point. Prof Albert van Jaarsveld is Chairman of the SAEON Advisory Board and Dean: Faculty of Science, University of Stellenbosch, and Prof Bob Scholes, a member of the SAEON technical panel, leads the Ecosystems Processes and Dynamics research group at the CSIR. (Picture © Mitzi du Plessis)

The highly successful SAEON Summit held in Gauteng in March 2006 presented an ideal opportunity for SAEON to evaluate its progress and to assess the best way forward for this fledgling organisation.

Participation in the discussions was lively and meaningful, yet interrogative. This set a trend of constructive engagement by the science community to further develop this welcome new addition to the national science system. The support for SAEON was encouraging and the degree of participation invigorating.

It was clear from the Summit that significant future investments into observation detection, analytical and experimental infrastructure, as well as observation-related technical expertise would be required to establish a competitive Earth observation capability for South Africa.

As a communication effort aimed at engaging both the science and policy-making environments, the Summit not only succeeded in its objective, but emphasised the importance of an effective communication strategy to develop and strengthen the network even further, thereby enhancing its value to the country.

Since receiving its first developmental grant from the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in 2003, SAEON has responded well to the challenge posed in the original proposal by its funders and the science community. Under the leadership of Johan Pauw and his able emergent team, SAEON has established a viable national office for the initiative under the guidance of the NRF. It has fast-tracked the rollout of its nodes in 2005 and 2006, and established the core of meaningful and far-reaching Science Education and Information Integration capabilities for the SAEON network.

The Summit emphasised the need for the further development of the Education and Information Integration functions of SAEON. Considerable time was spent on the development of a Core Science Plan for the future. After this initial period of securing the foundations for the institutional sustainability of SAEON, the focus over the next few years will shift towards establishing a sustainable science plan in collaboration with the science community.

In this regard, the collective inputs of the incoming Board, the DST and the NRF will be to strengthen the financial sustainability of SAEON, and to further develop the long-term observation capability of the network.