India’s ‘National Wetland Decadal Change Atlas’ was released on World Wetlands Day 2022 on 2 February. Formally named as ‘Space-Based Observation of Indian Wetlands’, the Atlas is documentation of wetlands across India, especially regarding the changes from 2006-07 till 2017-18.
The Mental Health Atlas, released every three years, is a compilation of data provided by countries around the world on mental health policies, legislation, financing, human resources, availability and utilization of services and data collection systems.
The Union Environment Ministry has released the latest version of “Desertification and Land Degradation Atlas of India. It has been published by Space Application Centre, ISRO, Ahmedabad. The A as provides a state-wise area of degraded lands for the time frame 2018-19.
In an effort to productively use India’s wastelands, the Ministry of Rural Development has come out with the fifth edition of Wasteland Atlas -2019, eight years after the last edition was published in 2011. This is significant as it takes into account 12.08 MHa of unmapped area of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) for the first time.
India is blessed with abundant sources of renewable energy and by March 2019 about 77.6 GW RE based capacity has already been installed in the country along with45.4GW of large hydro capacity. Out of total RE capacity wind energy represents a significant share of renewable energy portfolio.
SDSN has partnered with the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, and Equitable Origin to create a shared understanding of how the renewable energy sector can contribute to the SDGs.
Every year, the EU promotes European agriculture with almost 60 billion euros per year. The agricultural atlas of the Heinrich Böll Foundation shows that hardly any of this money is used for healthy food, the protection of the environment, climate and biodiversity or the preservation of small and medium-sized businesses.
If current trends continue, some of the lower-altitude glaciers of the tropical Andes could lose between 78 and 97% of their volume by the end of the century, reducing the region’s available freshwater resources. These alarming data are from the Water Atlas launched by UNESCO during the COP24 in Katowice (Poland) in december 2018.
The JRC published a new edition of the World Atlas of Desertification, offering a tool for decision makers to improve local responses to soil loss and land degradation.
Increase in desertification/land degradation affected areas, reduction in fertile lands and resultant migration of people and cattle, as well as poverty, are issues of global concern. Space technology can be effectively utilised not only for rapid inventory and monitoring but also for action plan preparation to combat land degradation.
