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.