Recently, Professor Bai Yuqi from the Department of Earth System Science (DESS), Tsinghua University was entrusted by the National Remote Sensing Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China to attend the annual meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in Ghana as a member of the Chinese delegation. Zhang Guangjun, Vice Minister of Science and Technology of China and Co-chairman of the GEO, led a delegation from China to attend the meeting and addressed the opening and closing ceremonies of the plenary session. Director Zhao Jing and Deputy Directors Lv Xianzhi and Liu Zhichun of the National Remote Sensing Center, relevant personnel of the International Cooperation Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and more than 100 representatives and experts from 8 departments in China who participated in the inter-ministerial coordination group for GEO work attended the meeting online.

Professor Bai Yuqi participated in side events such as meetings of the Executive Committee and the Third Decade Strategic Plan and the plenary session, conducting exchanges and discussions on core issues such as the construction of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) and the future development direction of the GEO, and expounded China's position on the final report of the GEOSS Re-evaluation Working Group and the preliminary progress report of Post2025, making important contributions to the proposal of China's participation in global governance in the field of Earth observation.

The GEO, the largest intergovernmental international organization in the field of Earth observation, features four priorities: the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the Sendai Disaster Reduction Framework, and "Resilient Cities and Human Settlements". Through coordinated, integrated and sustained Earth observation, the GEO supports biodiversity and ecosystem management, disaster prevention and mitigation, energy and mineral resources management, food security and sustainable agriculture, infrastructure and transportation system management, and public health. China, as one of the founding States of the GEO, has been co-chairing the Group with the European Union, the United States and South Africa since its inception in 2005.

Professor Bai Yuqi participated in the design of the GEOSS in 2007 and spearheaded the development of its core system (Component and Service Registry (CSR), and successively served as a member on the Infrastructure Implementation Board (IIB), member of the GEOSS Infrastructure Development Task Team (GITT), and Co-chair of GEO 2020-2022 Climate-OBS project. At present, he is one of the representatives of China in the Programme Board (PB) and the Third Ten-Year Strategic Planning Working Group (Post2025), having long participated in mechanism meetings such as the Executive Committee to help support the work of the Chinese co-chair in the Group.

Written by Cai Xiaobi