IOC Financial Resources

The IOC and its IODE Programme are supported by a combination of UNESCO Regular Programme funds (funds provided to UNESCO by its Member States) and extra-budgetary contributions provided to UNESCO (to Funds-In-Trust) or directly to the IOC (to the IOC Special Account). The budget of the UNESCO Regular Programme is adopted by the UNESCO General Conference for a 2-year period (biennium). 

The IOC budget from the UNESCO Regular Programme is approximately USD 4,000,000/biennium (average  2002-2007). A similar amount is allocated for core staff positions (professional and support staff). In 2006/2007 the IOC had a total of 21 UNESCO staff positions of which 9 were professional (P) and 12 support staff (G).

Below you can see the evolution of the UNESCO Regular Programme contributions between 1971 and 2009 (in millions of US dollars).

IODE financial resources 

The IODE Programme has a long tradition of effectively mobilizing extra-budgetay resources. These of course have to be added to the considerable resources that are made available nationally by the IOC Member States through the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs) or Designated National Agencies (DNAs).

The signing of the "Flanders-UNESCO Trust Fund for Science" agreement in 2000 has provided substantial opportunities for funding to IODE. Initially this support focused on regional activities in Africa (ODINEA, ODINAFRICA) followed later by OceanTeacher and the regional project "Caribbean Marine Atlas" and "ODIN-PIMRIS". Additional substantial extra-budgetary funding has been provided by the European Commission and by IOC Member States (eg United States) and private donors (eg Sloan Foundation).

The figure below shows the evolution of financial resources available to IODE between 2001 and 2009 (in US$). 

Human Resources

Human resources for the Secretariat have been a serious concern for IODE since the late 1990s especially at the professional staff level. Whereas the mobilization of extra-budgetary funding has increased and now corresponds with 96% of the total budget (ratio Extrabudgatary-Regular Programme will be 1:25 in 2009) professional staff has essentially decreased with the increase of budget. As from 2008  technical staff and as from 2009 professional staff positions are therefore being included in projects but it has to be noted that these are appointmens are of limited duration (project duration).

IOC Member States are invited to provide secondments to the IOC Project for IODE to strengthen the staffing of the Secretariat.

The graph below shows the evolution of staff number for IODE (in person equivalent).