by St Vin­cent Times

As part of the cre­ation of the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE), the For­eign Min­istry and the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Sta­tis­tics and Ge­og­ra­phy (IN­E­GI) of Mex­i­co signed an agree­ment with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) to in­stall a Geospa­tial Ob­ser­va­tion Cen­ter.

The Cen­ter will be based on the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Spe­cial­ized equip­ment will be in­stalled there to gen­er­ate and process free geospa­tial in­for­ma­tion that will be ac­ces­si­ble to the en­tire Caribbean re­gion.

Dur­ing the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, the Mex­i­can For­eign Sec­re­tary, Marce­lo Ebrard, said that the project strength­ened the ties of friend­ship be­tween Mex­i­co and the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM), pro­vid­ing these coun­tries with use­ful in­for­ma­tion for de­ci­sion-mak­ing on land use, cli­mate change and dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion.

This will ben­e­fit the coun­tries of the re­gion be­cause it is vul­ner­a­ble to var­i­ous weath­er phe­nom­e­na.

In his re­marks, For­eign Sec­re­tary Ebrard said that the Cen­ter would give us an­oth­er way to work with the Caribbean to en­able it to “bet­ter pro­tect it­self from the im­pact of cli­mate change, which will be in­creas­ing­ly acute… This is a tool to sup­port them, so that they can bet­ter or­ga­nize them­selves, an­tic­i­pate and be much bet­ter in­formed of what may hap­pen in the com­ing months and years,” he said.

“We are do­ing things as the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States that are aimed at co­op­er­a­tion, that is, for our Com­mu­ni­ty to be­come the main in­stru­ment of co­op­er­a­tion in the re­gion. That is ex­act­ly what we are all seek­ing,” he con­tin­ued.

IN­E­GI’s Pres­i­dent, Gra­ciela Márquez Colín, said that in the last 25 years geospa­tial in­for­ma­tion has be­come a fun­da­men­tal tool for de­ci­sion-mak­ing. She not­ed the im­por­tance of sign­ing the agree­ment, which will con­tribute to ef­fec­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween aca­d­e­m­ic and gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions re­gard­ing the use of geospa­tial in­for­ma­tion.

She said that the col­lab­o­ra­tion would strength­en IN­E­GI’s ties with the Amer­i­c­as, and that the joint ac­tions of IN­E­GI, the For­eign Min­istry and the UWI would pro­mote tech­no­log­i­cal de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the re­gion.

The Vice-Chan­cel­lor of the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Bri­an Copeland, thanked Mex­i­co for the ini­tia­tive, say­ing that this would not on­ly ben­e­fit the Uni­ver­si­ty and Trinidad and To­ba­go, but would pro­vide ser­vices to the en­tire Caribbean re­gion. The train­ing re­ceived from IN­E­GI spe­cial­ists will mean there will be per­son­nel with the tech­ni­cal skills to take ad­van­tage of the in­for­ma­tion at the geospa­tial ob­ser­va­tion cen­ter.

The Min­is­ter of For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Amery Browne, was hon­orary wit­ness to the sign­ing. He thanked Mex­i­co for the sup­port it has giv­en to the Caribbean as Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore of the Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) be­tween 2020 and 2022. He al­so ex­pressed his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the co­op­er­a­tion projects pro­mot­ed to date.

The aim of the Mem­o­ran­dum is to en­able the Caribbean to de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty to gen­er­ate ge­o­graph­ic and sta­tis­ti­cal in­for­ma­tion by us­ing the satel­lite im­ages and oth­er da­ta sources. This will al­low the Caribbean coun­tries to make pub­lic pol­i­cy de­ci­sions on dis­as­ter pre­ven­tion, cli­mate change, ur­ban growth, nat­ur­al re­sources and oth­er fac­tors that im­pact the qual­i­ty of life of their cit­i­zens.

The project has three key com­po­nents: in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture -in this case, servers and spe­cial­ized equip­ment to be in­stalled on the St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in Trinidad and To­ba­go-, the main­te­nance of spe­cial­ized pro­gram­mers to man­age the com­pu­ta­tion­al re­sources, and the train­ing of spe­cial­ists in the Caribbean with the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal skills to process satel­lite im­ages and in­for­ma­tion that serve their projects.

The cre­ation of ALCE was one of the projects pro­mot­ed by Mex­i­co as Pres­i­dent Pro Tem­pore of CELAC.

Source: St Vin­cent Times

https://www.stvin­cent­times.com/