Past Lessons, Future Focus

Global Climate Conclaves and Primacy of Spatial Insights

Geospatial data has assumed more importance than ever before in tracing, tracking, assessing climate change, devising parameters, and designing innovative solutions.

Over the past thirty years, the amount of carbon dioxide released through human activity has doubled. This represents a collective let down of the world’s leaders to focus on climate crisis. Despite 2020 and 2021 being dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic, the geopolitical landscape around climate change has shifted seismically.

In the wake of the recently released IPCC report, it’s time to reach a consensus and act now. This can only be done with the help of something that offers immutable inisghts and indisputable data.

The power of geospatial coupled with Artificial Intelligence can be critical to provide effective solutions at the upcoming COP28 in Abu Dhabi.

Geospatial satellite imagery can also provide a plethora of other solutions especially in identifying forest cover areas, and track illegal logging and mining activities that can destroy ecosystems like wetlands, coral reefs and grasslands. Biodiversity threatening invasive species can be tracked through satellite and Drone imagery allowing for targeted management.

By Jeffy Jacob

Earth Observation imagery can be used to assess the extent of damage caused by climate related disasters like floods, hurricanes & wildlife. This helps in categorizing areas in need of assistance, and guide reconstruction and rebuilding efforts. Risk analysis can also be done to pinpoint and isolate high risk areas that are susceptible to future disasters.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that is present in much lower concentrations (around 0.00017% of total atmosphere) than carbon dioxide (0.04%) in the Earth’s atmosphere, and is 28 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over a century old timescale. The shortwave infrared band is particularly useful for detecting methane emissions because methane absorbs strongly in this part of the electromagnetic spectrum. By analyzing imagery in the shortwave infrared band, high methane concentration could be detected that helps in prioritizing mitigation efforts.

Stage Set for COP 28

One of the agendas of COP28 is Sustainable Cooling and the much needed development of a Global Cooling Pledge. Use of cooling technologies and practices that are energy-efficient, environmentally friendly, and socially responsible encompasses the term. This ensures in mitigating the effects of climate change and urban heat. Green roofs, or rooftop gardens, is a vegetative layer grown on a rooftop. It helps with reducing urban heat that builds up in an urban sprawl. Green roofs provide shade, remove heat from the air, and reduce temperatures of the roof surface and surrounding air. To identify suitable areas for green roof installation, high resolution satellite imagery can be used to analyze the building footprint and surrounding area.

Ensuring global food system is resilient to the changing weather patterns is also an important focus point, lack of which threaten farmers around the world. With the ever changing and unpredictable weather, there is need to protect the most vulnerable communities from biodiversity loss. Investing in nature-based solutions, like mangroves, which act as potent carbon sinks while protecting coastlines and preserving natural ecosystems is also in the agenda for COP28.

Dr. Sultan Ali, President COP28,

Timeline of Conventions

The UNFCCC was created at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 to negotiate a worldwide agreement for reducing GHGs and limit the impact of climate change.

The UNFCCC officially came into force on 21 March 1994 and presently has 198 parties. Embodied within the UNFCCC are principles, including agreement by consensus of all parties, and differential responsibilities.

At COP3 on 13 December 1997, the first international agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, was drawn up which stated the general principles for a worldwide treaty on cutting GHG emissions and, more specifically, that all developed nations would aim to cut their emissions by 5.2% on their 1990 levels by 2008–12.

Even after the financial crash in 2008, expectations for COP15 in Copenhagen, 2009 were huge. New quantitative commitments were expected to ensure a seamless transition from the Kyoto Protocol. The leaking of the ‘The Danish Text’, subtitled ‘The Copenhagen Agreement’, and the proposed measures to keep average global temperature rise to 2°C above pre-industrial levels was the second blow.

All this laid the foundations for a future global climate agreement, which was achieved at COP21 in Paris in 2015 which was a stupendous success. The agreement states that the parties or nations are required to hold temperatures to ‘well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels’.

The Glasgow Climate Pact adopted at COP26 invited parties to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal. But only 34 out of 194 parties submitted Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) that had heavyweights like Australia and Mexico. Even the European Union increased its target from a 55% to a 57% reduction by 2030. Yet these strategies to a state of net-zero emissions were very few in number and COP27 decision urges the remaining countries to commit to a wider number of strategies by COP28.

COP27, took place in Sharm El-Sheikh, a resort town in Egypt in November 2022. The talks aimed to address the urgent need for global action on climate change.

One of the key historic outcome was the ‘loss and damage’ fund for climate impact in developing countries. It wasn’t an impeccable solution but it was a breakthrough on a topic long avoided by UN climate talks. The UN also revealed a $3.1 billion plan to ensure everybody on the planet is covered by early-warning systems in the next five years to reinforce nation’s ability to prepare for hazardous weather.

famously emphasised that COP28, being held from November 30th until December 12th, 2023 at the Expo City, Dubai will be a COP for all and a COP of Action. The focus shall be in moving economies forward while reversing emissions thus enabling transition that’s inclusive to all. Building on the progress made already made in Egypt during COP27, there is already a plan to operationalize the loss-and-damage fund fully for mitigating the damage done to the most vulnerable to rebuild after climate-related disasters. There is also a greater focus on working with energy industry to accelerate decarbonisation to reduce methane and work on tripling renewable energy generation from 8 to 23 Terra Watt Hours by 2030.

All of this cannot be achieved without doubling down on the power of geospatial insights, analytics, broad collaboration, creating technology awareness and stakeholder engagement.

Collective Challenges

Climate Change is one of the four crucial challenges of the 21st century, the others being global inequality, global insecurity and environmental degradation. The Earth's temperature is expected to rise and global sea level is predicted to increase resulting in a higher frequency of extreme weather events, like heat waves, droughts, storms, and floods. The severity of the impacts of climate change will be determined by the actions we take now as a collective to reduce carbon emissions.

Jeffy Jacob

Sub Editor

Jeffy@geospatialworld.net