The Global Environment Monitoring System: Principles and Progress

GEMS, the Global Environment Monitoring System, is a collective effort of the world community to acquire through monitoring the data needed for the rational management of the environment. While the origins of GENS are associated with the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972, the international effort to collect data through monitoring started decades earlier. Suffice it to remember the World Weather Watch within the UN system and, outside the system, the marine environment monitoring activities of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES).