The challenge is immense, to feed all of humanity and lift them out of poverty whilst protecting the environment.

The solution will require better data driving improved models and decision support tools leading to location and situation specific decision-making, producing more sustainable outcomes for agriculture, people and the environment.

GeoSpatial Analytics 2022

You don’t have to search hard to find a steady stream of scientific publications documenting increasingly difficult inter-related environmental challenges, occurring on accelerated timescales, that humanity will have to address sooner rather than later if we are to avert bigger problems in the future. Given the scale of the challenge, it is tempting to consider one issue at a time and promote and adopt absolutist solutions, however, the reality is that a more pragmatic integrated approach will be required to avoid simply creating new problems or shifting them from one location to another. In particular we need to ensure that proposed solutions actually deliver the intended outcomes and that poor people don’t unfairly bear the burden of well intended policy decisions that invest billions, don’t solve the problem and leave them in poverty.

The idiom “squaring the circle” draws on the mathematical impossibility of the geometry problem of constructing a square with the area of a given circle, however, it neglects the fact that good approximate solutions are available. In the same way, humanity will need to adopt applied best available solutions to square the seemingly impossible environmental risk circle and feed all of humanity as well as lift them out of poverty whilst protecting the environment on which we all depend. The scale of the challenge is immense as outlined by the data and statistics underpinning the UN Sustainable Development Goals. A selection of sobering statistics that shape our purpose and drive our business activities are presented below.

However, we are not deterred as we believe science can rise to this challenge if we collaborate and share resources. It is for this reason that GeoSpatial Analytics supports open-source publications, data and software as well as investing in activities that benefit the greater good not just our bottom line.

  • Marine SDG14
  • Ocean acidification and rising temperatures are threatening marine species and negatively affecting marine ecosystems.
  • More than 17 million metric tons of plastic entered the world’s oceans in 2021 and this volume is expected to double or triple by 2040.
  • Over 3 billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihood.
  • Terrestrial SDG15
  • One fifth of the Earth’s land area (more than 2 billion hectares) is degraded.
  • Land degradation is undermining the well-being of around 3.2 billion people.
  • Agricultural expansion is driving almost 90 per cent of global deforestation.
  • Around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction.
  • Poverty SDG1
  • More than 700 million people (10% of the world population) lived in extreme poverty (i.e. living on <$1.90/day) in 2015.
  • In 2019, 7.1% of employed workers and their families lived in extreme poverty.
  • About 4 billion people (55% of world population) did not benefit from any form of social protection in 2016.
  • Water SDG6
  • Two billion people live without safely managed drinking water services, including 1.2 billion people lacking even a basic level of service, in 2020.
  • For at least 3 billion people, the quality of the water they rely upon is unknown owing to a lack of monitoring.
  • Around 46% of people have no safely managed sanitation and 29% do not have hand washing facilities (water and soap) at home.
  • Climate SDG13
  • About one third of global land areas will suffer at least moderate drought by 2100.
  • As many as 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change.
  • By 2030, an estimated 700 million people will be at risk of displacement by drought alone.
  • Hunger SDG2
  • In 2020, between 720 million and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger.
  • A staggering 2.4 billion people (>30% of the world population), were moderately or severely food-insecure, lacking regular access to adequate food in 2020.
  • Globally, 149.2 million children under 5 years of age (22%) were suffering from stunting (low height for their age) in 2020.