Page 14 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

UN Environment

At the Second Global Session of the UN Science Policy Business Forum and UN Environmental Assembly
in March 2019, unprecedented initiatives were launched to unite global efforts to leverage frontier
technologies to monitor the state of the world environment. The four key outcomes will lay the
foundation for building a global digital ecosystem for the planet.

Firstly, ministers from 193 countries pledged to support UN Environment to develop a global
environmental data strategy by 2025, while simultaneously improving national environmental
monitoring systems and technologies. They also committed to promoting the use of data-analysis
models to develop environment foresights, support evidence-based decision making and improve
national and local preparedness and responses to mitigate environmental degradation and risks from
disasters and conflicts, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Secondly, a paper entitled ‘The case for a digital ecosystem for the environment: bringing together
data, algorithms and insights for sustainable development was adopted by the Working Group of the
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UN Science Policy Business Forum. This represents a collective intelligence process involving more
than 200 stakeholders, including a variety of trendsetting technology companies. The report makes
a clear call to action. Now is a pivotal moment in history when we can reimagine and supercharge
environmental governance and public-private partnerships by using big data, frontier technologies
and data analytics to target our action and investments. The working group was mandated to develop
an implementation plan for the digital ecosystem to be presented to in March 2020.

Thirdly, a vision for the World Environment Situation Room was launched. This groundbreaking
initiative aims to promote transparent access and sharing of statistical and geospatial environmental
data supporting policy and action for sustainable development, peacebuilding and humanitarian action
at the global, regional and national levels. The Situation Room supports ‘Environmental Foresight’
for the analysis of data, mapping trends, creating scenarios and identifying emerging issues on a
permanent basis, at the frontier of environmental knowledge. The situation room will be powered
by environmental spatial data from MapX. 32

Finally, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), Google Earth Engine and UN
Environment teamed up to develop a global water explorer application to help monitor SDG 6.6.1.
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It shows changes from 1984 to 2018 through interactive maps, graphs and full-data downloads and
provides critical statistics for every country’s annual surface water (such as lakes and rivers). The new
app aims to make this water data open, free and easily accessible.

Inger Andersen
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment
Programme

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