World Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi: Enhancing Research on Sustainability Goals
In early March, representatives of the global community will gather in the Indian capital, New Delhi, to promote the development towards a sustainable world: no poverty, no hunger, health and well-being. However, according to the latest United Nations progress report, the world is falling behind in the fight against hunger. How can free access to satellite images help achieve the United Nations' sustainable development goals and combat hunger?
Satellite Images – an Important Data Basis for Research
Remote sensing data recorded by satellites in the Earth’s orbit are an important tool for researchers working on issues such as environmental protection, biodiversity, or global nutrition. The images provide information across national borders about how land is used, for example, or which crop yields can be expected in a particular region. They help researchers to gain a precise picture of a region – without time-consuming on-site data collection.
Lack of Freely Accessible Data Representing Smallholder Agriculture
The problem is that there is currently a lack of free-to-use satellite data with sufficient spatial resolution for regions characterised by small-scale farming, as is the case in numerous African countries. "But it is precisely these small-scale farms that feed the people – and do so particularly effectively. They produce one-third of the world's food on only one-quarter of the agricultural land," says Dr. Philippe Rufin, an expert in remote sensing at the Department of Geography of Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin.
Together with colleagues from Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Mozambique, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA, Philippe Rufin is now calling for opening up commercial satellite image archives to advance research on the sustainable development goals. The use of such Earth observation data with a resolution of less than two metres can substantially improve the monitoring of small-scale agriculture, the authors write, and the derived information will, in turn, help provide scientific evidence as a basis for policymaking. This is needed particularly for sustainable development goal number two, "to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture," since no progress or even negative trends have been documented in nearly all world regions since 2015.
Current studies show that agricultural productivity in parts of Africa is stagnating or declining, threatening food security, while at the same time the threats posed by climate change are increasing. "Free access to commercial Earth observation data can lead to a better understanding of global dynamics in small-scale agriculture and bring about significant progress towards the United Nations' sustainable development goals," says Philippe Rufin.
Further Informations
- Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS): To enhance sustainable development goal research, open up commercial satellite image archives
- World Sustainable Development Summit in New Delhi from 5 to 7 March
Contact
Dr. Philippe Rufin
Geography Department of Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin
philippe.rufin@geo.hu-berlin.de
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