Towards integrated essential variables for sustainability

ABSTRACT

Measuring the achievement of a sustainable development requires the integration of various data sets and disciplines describing bio-physical and socio-economic conditions. These data allow characterizing any location on Earth, assessing the status of the environment at various scales (e.g. national, regional, global), understanding interactions between different systems (e.g. atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, geosphere), and modeling future changes. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was established in 2005 in response to the need for coordinated, comprehensive, and sustained observations related to the state of the Earth. GEO’s global engagement priorities include supporting the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. A proposition is made for generalizing and integrating the concept of EVs across the Societal Benefit Areas of GEO and across the border between Socio-Economic and Earth systems EVs. The contributions of the European Union projects ConnectinGEO and GEOEssential in the evaluation of existing EV classes are introduced. Finally, the main aim of the 10 papers of the special issue is shortly presented and mapped according to the proposed typology of SBA-related EV classes.

KEYWORDS:

• Earth observation
• GEO/GEOSS
• environment policy
• indicators
• knowledge
• implementation
• SDGs

1. Introduction

To understand and propose how to address global sustainability challenges, timely and reliable access to environmental data and information is necessary. Data provide the foundation for accountable scientific understanding and knowledge to support informed decisions and evidence-based policy advices (e.g. Giuliani et al. 2017; Lehmann et al. 2014). Consequently, measuring the achievement of the objective of a sustainable development requires the integration of various data sets and disciplines describing bio-physical and socio-economic conditions (Lehmann et al. 2017; Rockstrom, Bai, and deVries 2018). These data allow characterizing any location on Earth, assessing the status of the environment at various scales (e.g. national, regional, global), understanding interactions between different systems (e.g. atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, geosphere), and modeling future changes (Costanza et al. 2016).

2. The contribution of Earth observation

Earth Observations (EO) data, acquired remotely by space-borne/air-borne devices or in-situ sensors and observations, represent valid and globally consistent source of information for monitoring the state of the planet and increasing our understanding of Earth processes (e.g. Giuliani et al. 2017). The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was established in 2005 in response to the need for coordinated, comprehensive, and sustained observations related to the state of the Earth (Anderson et al. 2017). GEO’s global engagement priorities include supporting the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (GEO 2017). The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) has been developed as a global and flexible network of data and providers with the aim of facilitating the access of all end users to the widest possible range of EOs (Nativi et al. 2015). As it brings together existing observing systems around the World it also helps to identify gaps in the system.

GEOSS links existing observing systems to strengthen the monitoring of the state of the Earth. It facilitates the sharing of environmental data and information collected from the large array of observing systems contributed by countries and organizations within GEO. Further, GEOSS encourage providers to make their data directly accessible, with consistent meta-information on quality, conditions of use, spatial and temporal ranges, and owner. GEOSS is only possible if data is made available using international standards of interoperability such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 211 for the delivery of information as web services, and for the development of web-based tools and interfaces or other interoperability arrangements. In order to make GEOSS useful to increasing our understanding of Earth state and processes, and enhances our predictive capabilities that should underpin sound decision-making (Nativi et al. 2015), we need to increase the interoperability to the next level: the semantic interoperability.

3. Describing the Earth system

To adequately describe the various sub-systems (e.g. atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, hydrosphere) that constitute the Earth system and to ensure that all potential users know what is the minimum set of observational data that they can expect, the concept of Essential Variables (EVs) has emerged in various communities (Reyers et al. 2017) (Figure 1). In this context, EVs can be defined as ‘a minimal set of variables that determine the system’s state and developments, are crucial for predicting system developments, and allow us to define metrics that measure the trajectory of the system’ (ConnectinGEO 2016b).

Figure 1. A proposition for generalizing and integration the concept of EVs across the Societal Benefit Areas of GEO and across the border between Socio-Economic and Earth systems EVs. Set of proposed EVs groups in grey boxes, Natural resource and corresponding data services forming the Natural capitals necessary for environmental sustainability (left-direction arrows), and socio-economic impacts jeopardizing Earth system integrity (right-direction arrow).

In most GEO Societal Benefits Areas (SBA) and other thematic areas, the development of a specific set of EVs emerged from a community process leading to an agreement on an essential set of observables to meet the objectives of the community and to support different set of objectives: national to global monitoring, reporting, research, and forecasting (Reyers et al. 2017).

The concept of EVs has been first defined by the climate community through the effort of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) that established a set of 50 Essential Climate Variables (ECV) to improve the coordination of climate observations (Ostensen, O’Brien, and Cooper 2008). ECVs support the work on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Bojinski et al. 2014). They were selected for their relevance in characterizing Earth’s climate system as well as their technical and economic feasibility for systematic observations (Giuliani et al. 2017; Reyers et al. 2017). These set of variables is now widely used in both science and policy domains and is regularly updated to adapt to the need of new priorities, knowledge and innovation.

Even if the concept of ECV cover areas other than atmosphere, approaches have been followed in various scientific communities working to extent the concept on the Ocean (UNESCO 2012) and Biodiversity (Pereira et al. 2013) domains. Other communities are currently working on defining a common set of Essential Variables such as Water (Lawford 2014), Agriculture, Energy and Ecosystems (ConnectinGEO 2016b). Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs) further clarifies the role of EV’s lying between primary observations and indicators (Geijzendorffer et al. 2016) but defined in a more abstract way. Such a definition allows accommodating both the diversity of data providers and the changing demand for indicators across regions and different policy needs (Reyers et al. 2017).

4. Describing the socio-economic system

While the environmental dimension of sustainability is decently characterized by the EV approach, the social and economic dimensions have been addressed in different forums and are not adequately connected to the environmental dimension. This currently makes more difficult the effective tracking of progresses towards sustainable development targets that depend of both dimensions (ConnectinGEO 2016a). Different approaches have been recently proposed for better understanding complex interactions between social and biophysical systems. Approaches such as the planetary boundaries (Rockstrom et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2018), ecological footprints (Fang, Heijungs, and De Snoo 2015), nexus and socio-ecological system metabolism (Giampietro, Mayumi, and Ramos-Martin 2009) are aiming to explicitly link environmental, social and economic dimensions. These approaches have the potential to pave the way to the definition of a set of Essential Socio-Economic System Variables (ESESV). Figure 1 depictures a proposal to structure the EVs framework. In the left hand side, we can see Earth System decomposed in the Atmosphere characterized by the Essential Climate Variables (ECV), the Hydrosphere characterized by the Essential Water Variables (EWV) and Essential Ocean Variables (EOV), the Biosphere characterized by the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) and the Geosphere characterized by still-to-be-defined Essential Geosphere Variables. All these systems provide services to humanity through Ecosystem Services (ES), Climate Services (CS), Water Services (WS) and Geological Services (GS). The term ‘Service’ can be understood as a service for human well-being as defined in the context of Ecosystem Services, but also as an information service as defined for Climate Services. Through its services, the Earth System provides an ensemble of services called Natural Capitals (NC) to the Socio-Economic System that can be decomposed into Urban environment, Energy and Minerals, Health, Agriculture, Transport and Infrastructure. For each one of these sectors corresponding broadly to GEO Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs), we could define essential variables. The Socio-Economic System has, in turn, societal impacts on the Earth System modifying the quantity and quality of the natural capitals on which it depends. Eventually, the interaction between both systems could be characterized in terms of their imbalances of sustainable goals. Indeed, GEO has identified eight domains, the SBAs, where application of EO can answer societal needs (GEO 2017). However, gaps are existing in EO data which can make addressing SBAs and policy frameworks supporting those areas difficult. Consequently, this requires identifying and prioritizing gaps as well as demonstrating the applicability of EVs for informing various policy frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN 2015).

All these efforts in systems and sustainability research allow advancing and identifying essential factors of social, economic and environmental systems change and evolution. The EV concept represents a significant opportunity to strengthen monitoring systems by providing more efficient observations and seize fundamental system dimensions. Finally, one EV can potentially contribute to multiple indicators, and a given observation can be linked to more than one EV. This can enable a potential reduction of the number of observations required to deliver indicators from a Big Data set of candidates observations to a Smart Data set of observations used to describe selected EVs (Reyers et al. 2017) (Figure 2).

Figure 2. EVs contextualization and relevant aspects to be considered.

5. Criteria for defining essential variable classes

Different communities have used various criteria to select and define their EVs. These include the following justifications: Representation – describing a system with a minimum set of variables; Feasibility – using variables that can be measured precisely and regularly with current technologies (sometimes also including cost effectively); Impact in policy – defined by policy needs; Connection to monitoring – defined to respond to specific policy reporting needs and useful to generate indicators.

We propose four traits to characterize an EV, as depicted in Figure 2:

1. Essentiality: this is a key characteristics, dealing with the effectiveness and representativeness that a given EV has on a policy and its related socio-ecological system, respectively.

2. Evolvability: In a dynamic universe, like socio-ecological phenomena and the related policies, EVs must be able to evolve. This process is guided by Community using a dynamic elicitation development and a consensus-based approach while maintaining consistency through time.

3. Unambiguity: to be usable, a given EV must be unambiguous; this requires to describe it in terms of semantics, resolution, accuracy, etc.

4. Feasibility: to be implementable, a given EV must be feasible; this regards its technology and cost requirements.

These traits should be carefully considered in the life-cycle of EVs – including the recognition phase.

6. Contributing European research projects

The EU-funded H2020 projects ConnectinGEO (http://www.connectingeo.net) and ERA-PLANET GEOEssential (http://www.geoessential.eu) have recognized the necessity to promote the generation of EVs in GEOSS across SBAs to facilitate linkages between data and knowledge and contribute to advance the GEO vision to unlock the power of EO for decision-making.

ConnectinGEO (2015-2018) (http://www.connectingeo.net) aimed at linking existing coordinated EO networks with the Science and Technology (S&T) communities, the industry sector and the GEOSS and Copernicus stakeholders. The goal was to facilitate a broader and more accessible knowledge base to support the needs of the GEO SBAs and their users. A broad range of subjects from climate, natural resources and raw materials, to the emerging UN SDGs have been addressed. A tangible outcome of the project is a prioritized list of critical gaps within the European Union in observations and the models that translate observations into practice relevant knowledge. The prioritized list also includes the research activities required to address these gaps. In the process of identifying gaps the EV concept was considered instrumental but the lack of compressive thematic coverage of the EV framework was identified and forced the project to consider and propose new EVs for other fields such as agriculture, energy, etc. All this has to increase coherency in European observation networks, increase the use of Earth observations for assessments and forecasts and inform the planning for future observation systems.

GEOEssential (2017-2020) (http://geoessential.eu) is addressing the need for trusted sources of data and information to monitor the progresses made on environmental conditions towards policy targets. The project is demonstrating the feasibility of EVs across GEO SBAs. It creates cross-thematic workflows to evaluate, predict and monitor natural resources to inform via Earth Observations the Sustainable Development Goals. Existing structures and platforms are analyzed in order to identify substantial gaps and synergies for addressing the needs of environmental policy in agriculture, soil, water, biodiversity, energy, light and raw materials. Solutions for improvements are provided in cooperation with GEO and Copernicus programmes. The methodology proposed in GEOEssential is going beyond the outputs of the ConnectinGEO project that identified key gaps in the definition of GEO EVs. The main idea is to build demonstration workflows that will be using EVs served by the GEO infrastructure to derive policy relevant indicators.

7. Mapping the content of the special issue with proposed EV classes

The objective of the present Special Issue is to introduce, discuss and propose how GEO and GEOSS could help to create and share more knowledge, possibly using less data, through a coordinated use of Essential Variables. This editorial paper situates the papers of the special issue within a new comprehensive typology of EV classes describing socio-ecological systems on the basis of GEO Societal Benefit Areas (SBAs) (Figure 1).

A set of three papers allows first to set the scene with a broad vision of EVs can be used across domains to inform policy making. Plag and Jules-Plag (2019) are advocating for a goal-based approach for establishing EVs for the implementation of the SDG agenda (ESDGV). Nativi et al. (2019) explore how EVs can be used for knowledge generation. Masò et al. (2019) introduce how EVs can link Earth Observations Observatory with policy indicators and monitoring using the Drivers, Pressures, State Impact and Response (DPSIR) framework.

Another set of four papers explore new developments in specific EV domains. Miranda Espinosa, Giuliani, and Ray (2019) review the current status of Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) and their accessibility. Ranchin et al. (2019) show how Essential sustainable Energy Variables (EEVs) are currently being developed. EBVs for ecosystem modeling are at the heart of Dantas de Paula et al. (2019). The interest of developing air quality EVs in cities is demonstrated in the city of Kiev in Ukraine (EUV) (Koloti et al. 2019).

The last papers present integrated approaches. The interest of EVs in transdisciplinary approached such as the food-water-energy nexus is tackle in McCallum et al. (2019). A case study for monitoring several SDG indicators from high-resolution land use maps is presented for Ukraine (ESDGV) (Lavreniuk et al. 2019). The last paper, Lehmann et al. (2019) discusses how the EV concept can be generalized and how it can be used with different tools provided by the GEOSS Platform to create cross-thematic workflows to evaluate, predict and monitor our progresses towards policy targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals.

8. Aim of the special issue

This special issue is neither an attempt to cover the entire field of EVs, nor a publication to provide definitive solutions. It is rather a call for more interactions between the different communities that are presently working, building or thinking of building a set of EVs. The Earth Observation community, as a whole, has to be careful that nothing is considered essential, anymore, if the EVs concept leads to the explosion of the number of EV sets. Finally, this publication wants to stimulate the discussion on how to characterize and monitor socio-ecological systems, in an effective and interoperable way.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Anthony Lehmann http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8279-8567

Gregory Giuliani http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-8865

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.