Today, at the International Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Google demonstrated a new technology prototype that enables online, global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's forests. This technology will help stop the destruction of the world's rapidly-disappearing forests. Emissions from tropical deforestation are comparable to the emissions of all of the European Union, and are greater than those of all cars, trucks, planes, ships and trains worldwide.
According to the Stern Review, protecting the world's standing forests is a highly cost-effective way to cut carbon emissions and mitigate climate change. The United Nations has proposed a framework known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that would provide economical incentives to rainforest nations to protect their forests, in an effort to make forests worth "more alive than dead." Implementing a global REDD system will require that each nation have the ability to accurately monitor and report the state of their forests over time, in a manner that is independently verifiable. However, many of these tropical nations of the world lack the technological resources to do this, so Google is working with scientists, governments and non-profits to change this.
This shows deforestation and degradation in Rondonia, Brazil
from 1986-2008, with the red indicating recent activity
As a Google.org product, this technology will be provided to the world as a not-for-profit service. This technology prototype is presently available to a small set of partners for testing purposes it's not yet accessible to the general public but it is expected to be broadly available over the next year. Google is working with many individuals and organizations (find full list here) in developing this technology in particular the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Google is also working with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a consortium of national government bodies, inter-governmental organizations, space agencies and research institutions through GEO's Forest Carbon Tracking (FCT) task force. Last month together they launched the GEO FCT portal and are now exploring how they can also together bring the power of this new technology to tropical nations.
The red "hotspots" indicate deforestation
that has happened within the last 30 days
0 comments:
Post a Comment