SDG and the fourth wave of environmentalism — a walk in the park
I found a new garden in my digital neighbourhood. It has many names, digital ecosystem, data4sustainability — some call it the fourth wave of environmentalism. It is a vast garden — patches are greening. From where I am standing I can see some nice bushes. Here and there young trees are stretching to the skies. I cannot possibly wander through it all. I like what I see. As a geographer I would like to rise above the landscape and peer down. Try to find a pattern and draw a map. It will have to wait. This is a report from a walk in that garden and some of my thoughts along the way.
Just for context — the fourth wave of environmentalism can be defined this way:
The land-conservation movement of the early 20th Century was the First Wave, and the second, which began in the 1960s, used the force of law to reduce industrial pollution. The Third Wave emphasized the power of economics — problem-solving, market-based approaches, and corporate/NGO partnerships. Now the Fourth Wave is seeing technological innovations giving people new powers to scale up solutions by supercharging all of the approaches that came before. (Fred Krupp on the WEF website)
A peek at the sustainable development goals
In September 2015 the UN General Assembly adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on the principle of “leaving no one behind” the new agenda emphasizes a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all. It is ambitious. 2030 is the year when it all should be in place. The goals should be relevant enough for all global citizens. Without achieving them we’re in trouble.
The link between real life and the SDG goals goes through data points. Ideally flowing massively from national statistics, observers, sensors and observation platforms. The data points are then processed giving us trustworthy indicators. This allows us to better understand the state of the world.
According to reporting from UNEP in 2019 68% of the indicators with an environmental dimension cannot be measured due to lack of data(1). I am not sure what to say about this. Surely, if the indicators do not deliver, then something has to be done? Why do we fail in setting good indicators? Is it difficult to find good data points? Or did someone simply choose the wrong indicators?
Upon reading about the SDG goals I got curious. What are the goals and what are the indicators? Can I understand some of this? Or is it only for policy makers, politicians or diplomats? I read up and decided to give it a try.
My starting point is my own background. Admittedly I am not a total newbie to this area. I am a geographer by training working with geographic information systems (GIS) at the Norwegian Environment Agency.
In my day job I work with biologists, ecologists, legal advisers, rangers, engineers, programmers and what not. My workplace is in Norway, but I am also engaged in some development cooperation work and quite often travel to African countries visiting counterparts in partner institutions.
It may not be my job description, but much of my job is to sift through information and try to find patterns or pathways which I then try to convert to a systematic understanding of our management of the environment and how information standards and computing systems can be of help to environmental management. Some of the systems already exist. Sometimes we need to work for weeks, if not months, to create new data infrastructures together.
Looking at a goal and its targets and indicators
I have been working with marine themes as of late I chose to look at goal 14. Was this something I can get my head around?
Goal 14 is to “Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources”. For short it says “Life below water”. This chapter has 10 targets. I will be looking at two of them, and I will start with target 1:
By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.
The indicator for target 1 is:
[..]index of coastal eutrophication and floating plastic debris density.
What is marine pollution? The target says “of all kinds” but points in particular to those from of land based activities. It also makes sure to specifically include “marine debris and nutrient pollution”.
The SDG tracker unfortunately indicates that “We are currently not aware of data for this indicator.”
Am I missing something here? Perhaps no data is available on an aggregated global level? And perhaps not for this indicator? But there surely is data on marine pollution. There is a sound pollution data set out there. AIS-data could easily be transformed to a global indicator of sound pollution. It would take some processing, but should be possible. Everything from “hacks” to more professional systems like those of the Scottish EPA can provide good baselines for a plethora of pollutants. Perhaps citizen science driven projects (5) one from by the Marine Conservation Society could be a starting point? Not to mention the monitoring of acute oil spills using satellites by KSAT and others. In their report “Contaminants in Europe’s seas” EEA describes several sources for data on contaminants. I am sure there are more.
Why chose indicators with no available data points? Why chose an indicator on what looks like it is a narrow subset of the target? Would it not be better to choose one which has data points and then add more indicators should they be available?
Lets move on to target A:
Increase scientific knowledge, develop research capacity and transfer marine technology, taking into account the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Criteria and Guidelines on the Transfer of Marine Technology, in order to improve ocean health and to enhance the contribution of marine biodiversity to the development of developing countries, in particular small island developing States and least developed countries.
The indicator of target A is:
Proportion of total research budget allocated to research in the field of marine technology
Again I looked to the SDG tracker for enlightenment. The newest data points are from 2013. Only 25 countries have provided data to this data set, and some of them do not have available data for some of the survey years. There are no data points from the African continent.
The importance of Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission Criteria and Guidelines on the Transfer of Marine Technology referred in the target is clear. It states:
“[..] marine technology refers to instruments, equipment, vessels, processes and methodologies required to produce and use knowledge to improve the study and understanding of the nature and resources of the ocean and coastal areas.”
Some of this is research, development or both. Some of it is a healthy combination research, development and governance. It is not easy to say which is which. The portion of research alone has been chosen as an indicator. But it does not look like a healthy indicator.
If it is too difficult to get global data for this indicator then why not scrap it? Then one could perhaps count the number of research vessels, buoys delivering open data, research papers within the scope, people employed in marine research, AIS data on activities of known research vessels and probably a lot more. Only counting the research budgets sounds a bit passive, particularly when the data is so sparse.
I will end this part with an example of what goes under the radar. Part of my day job is to contribute to development cooperation. One of our projects is to contribute to developing sensitivity atlases in collaborating countries. Most of them African countries. Much of the work is focused on coastal and marine areas. It is not research. It does not even make a blip on any research budgets. I still consider it represents “[..] processes and methodologies required to produce and use knowledge to improve the study and understanding of the nature and resources of the ocean and coastal areas.”? Yes.
The SDG goals and targets have been set. But their indicators are a work in progress. On the SDG webpages requests for ideas to better indicators are made. With the above I have made it a try. But as a commoner I am not sure my ideas would make it all the way to those it might concern. I have little faith in web-forms.
Perhaps we need a new way to collect ideas and accelerate governance innovation through public participation?
Processing the environment
We all want to do what is right based on the most up to date and relevant information available. Environmental managers and politicians are looking for a dashboard for the environment. Clearly — this can not be done in one country only, or in one region only for that matter.
In Norway one of the bigger data harmonisation projects is one aiming at aggregating information about ecological condition(4). Although not yet implemented one of the components will be a data infrastructure to provide environmental managers, policy managers, the general public and others with information about the ecological condition for Norwegian nature.
Through funding from many of the worlds governments GBIF — the Global Biodiversity Information Facility has become an international network and research infrastructure. From their website it is possible for anyone and anywhere to access well over 1.300.000.000 species recordings. With this type of data it is possible to model species distribution on a big scale. The Distribution and diversity of amphibians in Albania is just one of many examples.
Using computers to process existing data to establish an understanding of status or future consequences of human activities is not something new. Club of Rome did this way back in 1972 with computer calculations being the foundations for their report The Limits to Growth. The thing is, we have seen this for years in a host of products. Some say it is time to move on and centralise some of these efforts.
The UN Science Policy Business Forum and UN Environmental Assembly in March 2019 presentet an effort towards using tecnhologies to boost access to big data. The plan was to push towards monitoring the state of the world environment to support solutions, improve decision making and assess impacts. The work is highly commendable!
To further these thoughts Jillian Campbell and David E Jensen with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has authored the article The promise and peril of a digital ecosystem for the planet (3). In their article they make a strong case for how a digital ecosystem can support the SDG goals. In a follow up article, Are these the 20 top priorities in 2020 for a digital ecosystem for earth (3), 20 priorities to establish a digital ecosystem for our planet were presented. They have also published 2 other articles.
The first target presented by Campbell & co (3) was to develop a method for monitoring the sustainable development goals with an integrated accessible dashboard at the global level. As I have indicated above I have my doubts with regards to some of the SDG indicators. But it remains clear that to make sense on an aggregate level it is necessary to push more resources towards a unified presentation of the Sustainable Development Goals. We need a shining new dashboard with accurate instruments. We need standards, access to the right data, storage space, processing capacity and a lot more. The work done by Campbell and friends is inspiring!
The digital ecosystem
Not all components of the digital ecosystem are relevant for the SDG goals. They will still be able to contribute indirectly to the goals. Some of these projects will deserve more time than the persons or groups suggesting them can foster. Some might be limited by processing power, programming skills, funding for developing their ideas and more. From my work as an assessor for GBIF I have seen how this organisation foster development by funding ideas for establishing data collection systems or digitizing analog specimem collections. Perhaps this is what we need in the digital ecosystem as well?
Driving digital entrepreneurship with government money only is probably not going to cut it. Will the digital industry be able and willing to contribute through global institutions like the UN? Will the philanthropists come to the rescue?
Whichever way the money and data travel we will need to find ways to fasttrack good ideas which will be to the benefit of the Sustainable Development Goals and other initiatives which will help us from trashing our planet. The fourth wave of environmentalism might be just what we need to move forward.
Leaving the park
My walk in the park is over. I like what I have seen. To me this looks like the beginning of the digitalization of environmental management and governance. It is past due. I hope to be back for a new walk in the park sometime soon.
Disclaimer
My opinions are my own. They do not express the views or opinions of my employer.
References
- UN Environment. (2019). Measuring Progress Towards achieving the environmental dimension of the SDGs. UN Environment, Nairobi. Retrieved 29th of January 2020 from: https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/27627/MeaProg2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
- Jensen, Bakker & Reimer. (2020). Are these the 20 top priorities in 2020 for a digital ecosystem for Earth? https://medium.com/@davidedjensen_99356/digital-planet-20-priorities-3778bf1dbc27
- Campbell & Jensen. (2019). The promise and peril of a digital ecosystem for the planet. https://medium.com/@davidedjensen_99356/building-a-digital-ecosystem-for-the-planet-557c41225dc2
- Nybø, S. & Evju, M. (red) 2017. Fagsystem for fastsetting av god økologisk tilstand. Forslag fra et ekspertråd. Ekspertrådet for økologisk tilstand, 247 s. https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/7c4be071791f439b83fa035c03cdfc82/fagsystem-for-fastsetting-av-god-okologisk-tilstand_2017.pdf
- Nelms et al. (2017). Marine anthropogenic litter on British beaches: A 10-year nationwide assessment using citizen science data. Website: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716325918
