Last modified: 2016-05-03
Abstract
Within the environment sector open, accurate, and exchangeable spatial data can empower the organisations responsible for environmental decision making. Critically, it can help them prevent and resolve land use conflicts by encouraging early engagement in ‘problematic’ development projects. Biodiversity conservation and land use planning are inherently spatial, and as increasing pressures are placed on land use, it is vital for decision making to be well-informed and integrated. The aim of this project was to investigate spatial data access, accuracy, and use, in the WWF priority regions for biodiversity conservation. This was achieved through interviews and questionnaires sent to spatial data professionals and users within NGOs, government ministries, and private organisations. These initial investigations concluded that such stakeholders often fail to collaboratively use and share spatial data. Adding to decision making difficulties, results also found that vital datasets are frequently of poor accuracy, out of date, or are not interoperable. Such issues can lead to conflicts between (and within) natural resource users and environmental protection initiatives, which often results in concession confusion, environmental degradation, and ineffective natural resource management. The environment sector should, therefore, be investing in the strength of a country’s ability to transparently collect, manage, and share spatial data through their NSDI.
Despite this, there is currently neither a global measure of a country's NSDI to perform these functions, nor a way to identify where improvements need to be targeted. The second aim of the project was to change this, and an index to benchmark the effectiveness of countries NSDI from an environmental perspective was designed. A process of expert interviews, research, and pilot testing was used to create the final scorecard format and qualifying guidelines for scoring. The Index consists of three dimensions; human, technical and legal. For each of these a set of indicators has been identified with a particular focus on issues important to the environment sector, such as transparency, accuracy, and openness of spatial data. Ultimately, the scoring that the Index provides will allow investment and decision-making to be directed towards problematic areas, and will promote collaboration and motivation between government departments and other stakeholders to improve their spatial data quality, management, and availability. There is also the ambition that the index will raise awareness of potential barriers to a country effectively reporting spatial data evidence to the Sustainable Development Goals.
This research has built a comprehensive picture of how vital open, accurate, and transparent spatial data are to land use planning and conservation projects, and has identified where any barriers to improvement are. The results of the wider investigation will be used by WWF-UK to improve uncovered issues and to encourage key actors in each country to make improvements to transparency, accuracy, and openness of data. The index has been pilot tested and, looking forward, the aim is to implement it at a global scale, with potentially profound long-term benefits for improving spatial data, reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals, and for the environment, innovation, and investment.