Digital Discovery Series: Using UN Biodiversity Lab 2.0 for action on nature, climate and sustainable development

Are you interested in learning how geospatial data and maps can support action for biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable development? Do you want to learn about free, open source tools that can enable implementation of the UN Common Approach for Biodiversity?  This Digital Discovery session provided a training on the UN Biodiversity Lab (UNBL), a platform that provides stakeholders with global spatial data and analytics to support action for people and planet. The training attempted to:

• Raise awareness about the power of geospatial spatial data for environmental planning, monitoring and reporting.

• Strengthen capacity of UN system staff to use geospatial data for action on biodiversity, climate change, and sustainable development.

• Promote the use of UN Biodiversity Lab as a tool to support the use of geospatial data within UN agencies and across other stakeholder groups.

This training was held on 9 February 2022 in English, and was co-hosted by UNDP and UNEP/WCMC. It was aimed towards UN system staff working in regional hubs and country offices, but was open to all.

About UNBL

The UN Biodiversity Lab (UNBL) provides access to global data and analytics on people and planet in new ways to empower governments and stakeholders to take action to achieve their commitments to the Convention on Biological Diversity and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UNBL mission is three-fold: (1) to democratize access to spatial data and analytic tools as a global public good; (2) to support decision-makers to leverage spatial data for insight, priority-setting, and implementation; and (3) to empower stakeholders to use spatial data for monitoring and reporting.

Users can use UNBL to access 400 of the world’s best datasets on nature, climate change, and sustainable development; to view curated collections on key policy questions related to nature and climate; calculate dynamic metrics for any country in the world; and request a secure workspace to upload their own data layers and calculate metrics for any area of interest.  UNBL is freely available online to governments and other stakeholders as a digital public good.

About UN system collaboration on biodiversity

The UN-system, Member States, civil society organisations, and the private sector have all recognized that we are facing a complex crisis related to biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution. Through the UN Common Approach to Biodiversity, the UN system has underscored the urgency to act and committed to catalyse collective action to achieve the 2050 vision of ‘living in harmony with nature’. Among other objectives, the Common Approach encourages the UN system to advance and use digital information and communications technologies to ensure open access to and equitable coverage of biodiversity data.