A non-profit tech company and the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative have launched an open-source tool to track global progress in marine conservation.
The “30×30 Progress Tracker” platform was built by US-based SkyTruth in a bid to allow government agencies, NGOs, researchers, and people who are directly impacted by the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) to gather data and monitor and compare countries’ progress towards the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) target to protect at least 30% of the land and water by 2030.
Launched Monday at an ocean conference in Athens, the marine tracker is an independent aggregator of existing data providers, such as the World Database on Protected Areas, the Marine Protection Atlas, and the ProtectedSeas Navigator.
SkyTruth seeks to add more data in the near future, including socio-economic information and Indigenous territories.
“We aim to offer data as the foundation for broadening public participation and dialogue, ensuring bottom-up pressure on the world’s governments to stem the tide of extinction while respecting the rights and knowledge of local communities and Indigenous groups,” John Amos, CEO of SkyTruth, said.
Users could also be able to localise the key habitats and areas that are not yet under protection but have been identified by experts as critical places to safeguard marine biodiversity.
“I trust this democratisation of data will not only help communicate conservation efforts, but will also bring transparency and accountability to the task at hand,” Peter Thomson, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for the ocean, stated.
“Access to free, reliable, and real-time data is critical to ensuring effective marine conservation and fighting climate change,” added Melissa Wright, who leads the Bloomberg Ocean Initiative at Bloomberg Philanthropies.
SkyTruth said it plans to launch the terrestrial component of the platform at the COP16 UN biodiversity summit that will take place in Cali, Colombia, from Oct.21 to Nov. 1.
MPAs are widely considered the most effective tools for protecting biodiversity and conserving threatened species, though only 3-8% of the global ocean has been fully protected so far, according to the Campaign for Nature and the Marine Conservation Institute.
To date, 89 countries have signed the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdictions (BBNJ), also known as the High Seas Treaty, which aims to ensure that marine biodiversity is protected in the 60% of the global ocean that lies beyond national waters.
However, only four countries have ratified the agreement or are about to do so – Chile, Palau, Seychelles, and Belize. The treaty will enter into force when at least 60 states have ratified it.
By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com
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