Recent reports from the United Nations describe a grim state of the world for the climate, people, and nature. Humans are not on track to meet the goals defined in international conventions to limit rising temperatures, eliminate hunger and poverty, or stop biodiversity loss.
While these assessments are accurate, there are evidence-based reasons to have hope. Progress has been made on all three of these interwoven challenges. It needs to accelerate, yes, but the world already has all the necessary tools to accomplish these goals. Some of those tools are familiar to GIS practitioners who are wired to use ecological, physical, and social maps and data to solve problems.
I’m an ecologist working at Project Drawdown, which is on a mission to help the world stop climate change as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible. The world’s leading resource for climate solutions, Project Drawdown advances science-based products and services, fosters bold leadership, and promotes new voices and leaders who too often go unheard.
Greenhouse gas emissions, for example, come from many sources across many sectors. Solutions to stop climate change must address the full suite of greenhouse gas-emitting sources and sectors. At Project Drawdown, our past research identified about 100 climate solutions that, if implemented collectively, can stop climate change. Many of those solutions—such as producing power from wind and solar energy sources, driving electric cars, and updating heat sources in buildings—are well-known.
But the forestry, agriculture, and land-use sectors are absent from most climate discussions. Yet these industries account for 22 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest sources coming from the deforestation that occurs to make way for expanding agricultural commodities and cattle production.
To illustrate how important the forestry, agriculture, and land-use sectors are to achieving climate goals, my colleagues and I worked with Esri’s ArcGIS StoryMaps team to produce stories such as The Living Land, which shows how agriculture has transformed the planet, and The Cost of Beef, which outlines the environmental impacts that people’s food choices have on water, land, nature, and the climate. Protecting tropical forests and eating healthier, plant-rich diets are two of the most effective solutions for stopping climate change.
Knowing it’s possible to stop climate change with the tools that are already on hand is an essential first step. But planners, decision-makers, and practitioners want to see actions and need answers to the following questions:
- Which solutions work well where?
- How do people and nature fit in?
Both questions highlight what Project Drawdown has planned next.
First, the science community needs to shift its focus away from describing the problem and toward guiding decision-makers on where to allocate their time and funding. Data and GIS can be used to do this—by mapping solutions’ relative suitability and their impact in different locations.
Next, climate scientists and conservationists need to use socioeconomic data to assess solutions’ feasibility and costs. Again, data and GIS can be used for this. For example, Project Drawdown’s executive director, Dr. Jonathan Foley, has worked with Esri chief scientist Dr. Dawn Wright and other climate leaders to teach Esri’s free GIS for Climate Action massive open online course (MOOC). The MOOC shares tools and methods for using GIS to monitor climate indicators, assess risk, evaluate solutions, and track progress.
Finally, the climate and conservation communities need to place people at the center of their discussions. While I value all animate and inanimate beings and ecological processes on Earth, I realize that my views are not the norm. In surveys done worldwide, people’s needs for food, water, income, and rights always take priority over stopping climate change and preserving nature. Misaligning priorities can create tension—particularly in lower-income countries in the Global South—when international funding and priorities favor climate change mitigation and conservation over meeting people’s basic needs. Priorities in these regions, especially, need realigning.
At Esri’s Geodesign Summit in April 2024, I shared ideas for how to put this realignment into practice using widely available data and GIS tools. By mapping social challenges and modeling the suitability and impact of potential actions, GIS practitioners can drive how quickly common challenges across sub-Saharan Africa and other regions in the Global South get solved, including eradicating hunger and poverty, improving health, and increasing access to clean water and electricity.
With support from the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Collaborative Research on Sustainable Intensification, which is managed by Kansas State University, Project Drawdown conducted a pilot study in Senegal to see which actions in food production could be targeted to have the most significant effects on the country’s food system. The study took a broader view of the food system than simply on-farm food production. This is because many studies show the following:
- Food security is often driven as much by off-farm income as on-farm production. This is particularly true in semiarid countries where much of the food consumed domestically is imported.
- Opportunities to increase income are tightly linked to having electricity.
- Electricity enables better education and health care.
- Most premature deaths are caused by poor indoor air quality due to using fuelwood and charcoal to cook food.
Indicators of food security, income, health, and many other aspects of people’s well-being are available in USAID’s Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program. This program has operated for more than 30 years and collected data across 90 countries. As Project Drawdown did with its Senegal pilot study, GIS tools can be used to interpolate this data and create countrywide maps that identify the targeted actions that have the most consequential impact. This allows the potential wins and trade-offs for climate and nature to be assessed.
The work that Project Drawdown did for Senegal is summarized in an ArcGIS StoryMaps story called Improving Food Security in Senegal, made with guidance from Esri’s ArcGIS StoryMaps team. The project had a six-month timeline, so members of the team did not have enough time to fully engage with many partners. The next step is to work with partners to assess the utility of the maps and data and collaborate to make them more useful.
GIS-based solutions that are aimed at improving people’s lives, protecting nature, and stopping climate change can help decision-makers more effectively target actions to maximize wins in all three categories and minimize the trade-offs. Project Drawdown’s Senegal study illustrates a process that is widely applicable to other contexts and uses readily available open-access data. Employing approaches like these can help accelerate the process of designing and creating a sustainable world for all.
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