Big Earth Data can support sustainable development goals

Big Earth Data can support sustainable development goals
by Staff Writers
Beijing, China (SPX) Sep 26, 2023

The Report on Big Earth Data in Support of the Sustainable Development Goals (2023) was released by the Chinese side at the High-level Meeting on Global Development Initiative Cooperation Outcomes held in New York on September 19 local time, according to the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

The new report presents 41 research cases covering seven sustainable development goals (SDGs) including Zero Hunger (SDG 2), Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7), Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11), Climate Action (SDG 13), Life below Water (SDG 14), and Life on Land (SDG 15), as well as the interactions among SDG indicators.

These cases demonstrate the monitoring results and midterm review of relevant SDG indicators at four scales: global, regional, national, and typical areas, representing innovative practices of harnessing Big Earth Data to advance the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as Global Development Initiative (GDI).

This year marks the halfway point for achieving the 17 SDGs defined by the UN 2030 Agenda, which has encountered serious challenges despite the overall advancement. The lack of timely and accurate data remains a bottleneck hindering the implementation of the SDGs and the formulation of science-based decisions.

The new report provides 32 sets of data products at global and Chinese scales, filling the data gaps in the fields such as water environment and climate change. The data products, with greatly improved spatial resolution, can finely depict the environmental changes globally and in China, and can provide accurate data support for environment-related SDG indicator monitoring and evaluation.

The new report also evaluated the progress of 92 environment-related SDG indicators in China from 2010 to 2022. The results show that China's environmental indicators are greatly improved, and 51 environmental indicators have achieved the SDGs ahead of schedule.

It is the fifth straight year since 2019 that China releases the report series which are drafted by the research team from the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS) as well as the Big Earth Data Science Engineering Program (CASEarth).