A new conservation tool, the Global Ecosystems Atlas, has been launched with the goal of providing a comprehensive resource for monitoring all the world’s ecosystems.
Unveiled this week at the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in Cali, Colombia, by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the atlas aims to support the protection, restoration, and sustainable management of ecosystems – a task that is critical to addressing global environmental crises.
Despite the threats to biodiversity, many fundamental questions about our ecosystems remain unanswered due to inconsistencies in existing data. Just over half the world’s ecosystems have been mapped so far and, even with global indicators for ecosystem monitoring, there is no consistent method for compiling data on a worldwide scale.
By providing access to high-quality, reliable and standardised data on ecosystems worldwide, the atlas will help identify priority areas for conservation and restoration - which could make it an invaluable resource for policymakers, financial institutions, private companies, and local communities.
‘The Global Ecosystems Atlas is the first intergovernmental effort to develop a collation of the best ecosystem data from countries and it will serve as a critical tool by providing high-quality, reliable data on ecosystems around the world,’ says Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity.
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