Blue Planet Foundation Contributes to the work of the Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Beijing
Csaba Kőrösi, Strategic Director of the Blue Planet Foundation and 77th President of the UN General Assembly co-chaired the Scientific Committee of the Fourth Forum on Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (FBAS) in Beijing. The forum was hosted by the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS), and its purpose is to harness real-time satellite data to monitor where we are in meeting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This system, among other things, will be able to reveal and track the state of soil health, see how effective water management is, and how sustainable cities are. It will allow us to observe and monitor our results relating to seven of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in total. (2. Zero Hunger, 6. Clean Water and Sanitation, 7. Affordable and Clean Energy, 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities, 13. Climate Action, 17. Partnership for the Goals.).
Csaba Kőrösi delivered the keynote speech at the beginning of the forum promoting this cooperation and expressed his views on the current state of affairs: „SD reporting lacks standardisation and validation, it is pursuing political beauty contest, and ranking is appreciated by short-term political considerations.” In other words, they use the results achieved in a given period to compare their countries to another and not to monitor their own progress and identify what needs to be done for further development. His message to conference participants was the following: “Development must be measured in its interrelated components, and high quality and available data are key to any reliable assessment. Scientific methods must be used to assess sustainability transition and adopt the results. For this reason, science-policy interface should be significantly upgraded at a national level as well as in intergovernmental platforms.”
The forum’s concept to use and combine exact, real-time, massive data sets is an ideal starting point for handling these issues.
This year, the FBAS identified further goals: the new initiative aims at realizing a common global digital data system that utilises AI to aid us in monitoring the SDG results. To facilitate the partnership, the CBAS offered its relevant data.
In the closing speech, Csaba Kőrösi introduced the Beijing Declaration on Partnership for Accelerating Sustainable Development through Digital Technologies. It sets out seven objectives, including strengthening the partnership between the scientific communities and governments, as well as between the private sector and civil society. It also highlights the need to make scientifically relevant knowledge globally available so that all of humanity can benefit from it and we can collectively contribute to achieving sustainability at a global level.