The United Nations Office for outer space affairs and its contributions to implement the 2030 agenda for sustainable development

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) has the mandate to assist Member States with building capacity in using space science, technology and their applications in support of sustainable economic, social and environmental development. As we prepare for UNISPACE+50, to be held in 2018 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first UNISPACE conference and aiming to bring together the Member States of the United Nations to reach consensus on a global space agenda for the next two decades, it is time to take stock of the achievements of the work of the Office and its capacity building activities, to review its mandates and to consider the necessity to strengthen its actions to better align them with the future needs of the World and in particular with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agenda is based on a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets and linked to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the outcome of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. This paper describes the efforts on-going at UNOOSA, building on its experiences with implementing the United Nations Programme on Space Applications and the United Nations Platform for Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (UN-SPIDER) and working with Member States and other United Nations entities in promoting and streamlining space-based solutions to help attain the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In particular, UNOOSA will bring forward its assets in developing space-based analytical capabilities of Member States and contribute to UN wide efforts in integrating space technology and applications in the targets and indicators framework of the 2030 Agenda.