Last modified: 2016-08-24
Abstract
Land-use change from infrastructure, mining, agricultural or forestry developments is the biggest driver of habitat loss for wildlife and can threaten essential ecosystems services. A global conservation organisation such as WWF needs to be able to anticipate and engage earlier with the actors that can influence the location, extent and execution of major projects that drive land-use change. These are namely governments, companies and financial institutions. To do this we need spatial intelligence and an easy to use, online mapping platform that integrates key development and environmental datasets.
WWF-SIGHT is a cloud-based Arc- GIS mapping tool that is integrated with the WWF Global Observation and Biodiversity platform (GLOBIL). GLOBIL centralises and mobilises geo-spatial data from around the organization for monitoring and evaluation, assessment of ecosystem status and provides an outlet for public communications and marketing.
WWF-SIGHT has been piloted by WWF-UK and WWF-Norway. It is a WWF internal tool and will soon provide WWF’s global network with the capacity to quickly assess questions, from simple spatial mapping to complex land-use scenarios and understanding development conflicts in different regions, such as, the Amazon biome.
WWF-SIGHT provides an up-to-date means to visually comparing proposed or existing development projects and activities against key social and environmental metrics almost anywhere in the world. Its vision is to improve decision making through providing easy access to integrated spatial information, and allowing analysis prior to, or early in, the project life-cycle. This should help contribute to reduced environmental and social risk and more sustainable investment and development.
WWF-SIGHT provides much needed early intelligence on development activities, in particular in the extractives sector, which is fundamental for informing robust land-use planning, policy and investment. Moreover, by improving data transparency WWF-SIGHT aims to highlight the wider social and environmental costs of unsustainable development, fostering greater accountability for governments, companies, and investors. We are also discussing with financial institutions and representatives of extractive companies what a tool of this kind could do to reduce financial and operational risk if, for example, used for early environmental and social risk screening with outputs tailored to the sectors information and reporting needs. Sector-wide adoption by the finance and extractives sector of such spatial early environmental and social risk screening tools could go a long way to avoiding detrimental environmental and social effects.