Page 80 - Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

Frontier Technologies to Protect the Environment and Tackle Climate Change

of ecological and biodiversity research. AI can be used to analyse changes and threats to ecosystems
and provide an understanding of the processes at play, while also facilitating a rapid response. A 2018
article by Norouzzade in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has shown that AI can
automate animal identification for 99.3 per cent of the 3.2 million images in the Snapshot Serengeti
dataset. Moreover, it can perform at the same level of accuracy (96.6 per cent) as crowdsourced
teams of human volunteers. The authors of the article affirm that ‘automatically, accurately, and
inexpensively collecting such data could help catalyze the transformation of many fields of ecology,
wildlife biology, zoology, conservation biology, and animal behavior into ‘Big Data’ sciences’ (UNESCO,
2019). AI and IoT are, therefore, being combined with technologies such as robotics in UNESCO’s
World Network of Biosphere Reserves, which counts more than 700 sites in more than 120 countries,
several of which are transboundary.

g. Space 2.0 Technologies for precise monitoring of ice sheets and ice caps to help
accurately predict sea level rise and global weather patterns

Space 2.0 technologies are the successors to Space
1.0 (which is sometimes characterized as the first
space age, which lasted approximately from 1957 until
2000). Space 1.0 resulted in essential technologies
such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) that were
eventually adopted for wider commercial use. Private
space companies are now visible participants in the
new space age, alongside traditional players such as
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). 232

Earth’s climate does vary naturally, especially over prolonged periods of time. It is difficult to separate
natural variability from changes caused by human activity, but this separation is important for
confronting man-made climate change and its challenges. This speaks to the need for understanding
the complexities of how the Earth functions as an entire system in the face of accelerating climate
change. Hard evidence is vital for predicting future climate and weather patterns, and how best to
mitigate and adapt to the realities posed by climate change.

Satellite technology has, over the decades, provided unequivocal evidence of the changes taking
place on Earth due to climate change. Satellite measurements of the Earth’s changing temperature,
sea levels, atmospheric gases, declining ice and forest cover, for example, are some of the key ways
of obtaining the scientific data needed to improve understanding of the Earth as a geological system
and predict its climatological future.
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It is important that satellite measurements
continue over long periods of time so that
changes to geological features such as ice
sheets can be monitored accurately. Climate
change is eliminating significant portions of
the polar ice caps and ice sheets so rapidly
that the melt has already caused a significant
contribution to overall sea level rise. Unfettered
global warming will lead to the loss of further
ice, further threatening coastal cities around
the world. Indeed, by 2022, there may be little,
or no permanent ice left in the Arctic.
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