Contributing to the UN Sustainable Development Goals
The decreasing cost of satellite data in the past decade, along with the launch of the ESA Sentinel mission, has made Earth observation (EO) and geospatial information more attractive than ever for addressing global challenges like poverty, monitoring environmental changes, and stimulating economic growth. It is especially valuable in developing countries, which often do not have adequate monitoring systems to track progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and other global and national goals.
Last Friday, GeoVille and its partners from UN Environment World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), DHI-UNEP and DHI-GRAS kicked off the project “Earth Observation for the Sustainable Development Goals” (EO4SDG) funded by the European Space Agency (ESA) to support the utility of satellite EO in the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development and in particular in the Global Indicator Framework adopted by the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) at its 48th session in March 2017. The aim of the project is to maximise the contribution of EO data to the SDG agenda by producing targeted high-quality indicator monitoring guidelines and effective outreach material, and by showcasing the usability of EO data in country demonstrations studies and in dialogue with UN stakeholders. As such, a dedicated case study will be implemented in Uganda, concentrating on SDG indicator 6.4.1 “Change in water-use efficiency over time” as well as 15.3.1 “Proportion of land that is degraded over total land area”, respectively.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework constitute the world’s foremost development agenda towards 2030. With 17 goals, 169 targets and 232 indicators to keep track of, the challenge of creating an overview of the status and progress across different topics will be immense and require vast resources.
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