Sustainable Development Goal Achievement in the Presence of Increased Human Pressure

Abstract:

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 social and environmental goals that represent an international and coordinated effort to lift the world toward a sustainable future. Achievement of the SDGs is targeted for the year 2030, and it is essential to have monitoring tools that can contribute toward understanding whether countries are (or are not) on track to achieve their respective SDGs. The human footprint index (HFI) is a potential monitoring tool, which is a dimensionless metric capturing the extent of human impact on the land surface. Likewise, the HFI is used extensively in biodiversity research, and could be a well-studied proxy for understanding dynamics of achieving SDG#15 ‘Life on Land’. We present a machine learning-based HFI (ml-HFI) using processed, global, Landsat imagery. We provide a global estimate of HFI for the years 2000 and 2019, and calculate the corresponding change in HFI during this 20 year period. This update constitutes a major advancement beyond existing methods, which require comprehensive global modeling, multiple data sources, and expert knowledge - and which still lags the present by seven or more years. Our approach blends cutting edge methods in convolutional neural networks, with existing remote sensing imagery producing an easily-updatable, near-real time global calculation. Using the latest assessment of country-level progress toward achievement of SDG#15, ‘Life on Land’, we find that multiple countries are simultaneously making steady progress toward achievement of SDG#15 while experiencing increasing human pressure. While the reasons for this likely vary across countries, the central finding is that progress toward biodiversity-oriented SDGscan coexist with increasing human pressure on the landscape. Moving forward, science and policy must work to understand why and how this is possible, to better target policies that will foster a thriving society and environment in the Anthropocene.