The power of politics

“Clarity on the political weighting of national climate change research will only emerge after next year’s national elections.” – Johan Pauw, Managing Director, SAEON  The sterling work by Prof Sue Milton and Dr Richard Dean at the Tierberg Karoo Research Centre leaves SAEON with a scientific legacy that will make a significant contribution to the future work of the Node for Arid Lands at Kimberley.

- By Johan Pauw, Managing Director, SAEON

The past two months have seen some important information management developments within SAEON.

Following the cooperative agreement signed by SAEON and CSIR, we were able to move on to the second phase of the development of the CoGIS that will form the backbone of our future information sharing and data management activities.

The project started with the development of software that will allow the various metadata protocols in use to “speak with each other”. This will allow data providers and users to continue using their preferred metadata language.

SAEON also got involved with the World Data System and is set to contribute to the proposed World Data Centre for Biodiversity and Health by acting as a “guinea-pig” for the developers. SAEON would like to involve many of its relevant participants in this ICSU-funded endeavour which should have produced a prototype by August 2009.

The Eco-Informatics supplement to Position IT: ‘Ecological Circuits’, has been published and contains a wide array of articles, a number of which have been authored abroad. It appears that a local niche has been filled by the publication and work has already started on a second issue.

The sterling work by Prof Sue Milton and Dr Richard Dean that they have kept intact at the Tierberg Karoo Research Centre outside Prince Albert, has now been cleaned, organised, compiled and digitised complete with data sets, photographs and articles. This leaves SAEON with a scientific legacy that will make a significant contribution to the future work of the Node for Arid Lands at Kimberley. The example set by these two researchers in meticulous data management should be an inspiration to others.

As we are storming towards year-end, there appears to be far-reaching developments in the macro business environment of SAEON. Recent political developments at both local and international scales may influence the relevance of SAEON. Certainly, the new leadership in the USA will bring that influential country more in step with current thinking on climate change. Clarity on the political weighting of national climate change research will only emerge after next year’s national elections.

Change of leadership

Closer to home, both the Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation appear to be set for a change of leadership in 2009.

None of these developments will change the direction of SAEON, however. If anything, there will be new game rules and priorities, all using new words for old fundamentals, one of which is that human society depends on a healthy and competitive environment, and for its own well-being, society must have an environmental observation system to contribute to an understanding of the dynamics that determine the status of the environment.

This remains the core objective of SAEON.