Foreign media published an article on June 22, 2022. On June 16, the 28th World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, the China National Homeland event was held in Beijing. Chinese scientists released an online tool "Green Great Wall Big Data Facilitator" to help African countries prevent increasingly serious land degradation.
Land degradation is one of the most significant global ecological and environmental challenges. Africa is particularly vulnerable to land degradation and desertification and is the most affected region. “As much as 65% of productive land is degraded, while desertification affects 45% of Africa’s land area.”
In the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the United Nations describes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), of which SDG 15 proposes “By 2030, combat desertification and restore degraded land and soil, including affected areas lands affected by desertification, drought and flooding, and working towards the prospect of a land degradation neutral world”.
To address data gaps in global land degradation monitoring, a team of Chinese scientists led by Professor Li Xiaosong from the Center for International Research on Big Data for the Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS) and the Institute of Aerospace Information (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, teamed up with Beijing The Normal University collaborated with several other institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, including the Computer Network Information Center and the Software Research Institute, to develop a 30-meter land productivity dynamics (LPD) calculation tool. As the world's first 30-meter LPD calculation tool,
can calculate 30-meter LPD within a specified global spatial range and time period, thereby providing important data support for global land degradation monitoring.
The calculation is based on the CBAS-supported SDG big data platform, which was launched in Beijing in 2021 to promote the implementation of the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
The Great Green Wall is an Africa-led initiative launched in 2007 to restore the continent's degraded landscapes and transform the lives of millions of people in the Sahel region. In order to support the development of the "Great Green Wall", Chinese scientists used this tool to produce a 30-meter spatial resolution LPD product in 11 Pan-African Green Great Wall Agency (PAGGW) member countries, covering an area of 9.34 million square kilometers. The spatio-temporal analysis results of
show that from 2013 to 2020, the land productivity growth in PAGGW countries accounted for 16.25% of the total area, and the productivity decline accounted for 7.36% of the total area.
For the Sahel region, the main target area of the Green Wall, the land with increased productivity accounts for 8.45% of the total area, while the land with declining productivity accounts for 9.24% of the total area. This is not optimistic about the development prospects of the Great Green Wall.
The LPD product provided by the Great Green Wall big data service provider can be used to track the progress of LDN in target areas. In addition, the platform provides a knowledge base on land degradation prevention and control, which is obtained from the successful practice of land degradation prevention and control in northern China.
Officials from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said the online tool provides "China's solution" for using big data to conduct global land degradation assessments.
Ibrahim Thiaw, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), expressed his appreciation for the launch of this online tool, saying that these results have the potential to promote in the future. Construction of the Great Green Wall of Africa in .
