Driving impact — what did Vizzuality accomplish in 2023?
2023 was another big year for the world, yet not always for the better. Within the environmental sector, we’re familiar with the feeling of swimming against the tide, working towards urgent and essential transformation. That’s why we want to pause and reflect on what we accomplished in 2023 - our contribution to global impact, from the projects we work on to the products we create, and the individuals in our company empowered to enact change in other ways. We are just some of the many individuals and organizations driving positive change worldwide. We hope that in 2024 and beyond, all of these actions from across sectors and society will convene to create the reality we urgently need: a fair and sustainable world for all.
At Vizzuality, our role is to help our clients and partners increase their impact through design, technology, and data. Whether it is the visualizations our designers create, the data pipelines our engineers build, or the analysis conducted by our science team, we are focused on making it easier to use, understand, and act on scientific knowledge for a more equitable society and a more sustainable planet.
Steps towards sustainability
Here are a few of our favorite stories from the past year about how our projects and partners create change.
Mongabay wins BBVA Biophilia Award for conservation. This prestigious award recognizes Mongabay’s outstanding track record of raising awareness of critical nature and biodiversity issues — and solutions — particularly in the Global South. At Vizzuality, we’re proud to support this great organization with our partnership in building no-code visualization tools to aid journalists in reporting on environmental issues.
Marxan enables inclusive conservation planning. For over 20 years, Marxan has been the leading tool for spatially planning how to conserve species while minimizing adverse effects on people. In 2020, we helped release the cloud-based Marxan Planning Platform (MaPP) to make it easier for non-experts to collaborate in these critical processes. Most recently, MaPP is being used by a group of organizations in the Mediterranean to understand better options for transboundary protection of the unique biodiversity of the Southern Adriatic Ionian Sea.
Transitions Pathway Initiative Stopping climate change requires an enormous reallocation of financial resources to transition the global economy to a low-carbon future. The Transitions Pathway Initiative (TPI) provides data for financiers to ensure that their investments are aligned with a net-zero future, tracking over 1,000 of the world’s highest-emitting companies, the 25 largest banks, as well as the sovereign debt of 25 countries. As of 2023, TPI supporters include over 140 financial institutions representing $60 trillion in assets under management.
The Resilience Atlas informs food security resilience across 12 countries. Conservation International’s long-running Resilience Atlas platform supports evidence-based decision-making through visualization. It has enabled both novel insights, for example, showing the relationship between forests and food security and easier access to scientific data. Most recently, it was used as part of a Global Environment Facility program to support 12 countries to plan for more sustainable, resilient, and secure food systems.
Climate Watch influences country commitments on climate behind the scenes. Climate Watch tracks country actions and commitments on climate. In 2025, countries will be obliged to submit updated NDCs, the formal commitments to the UN to act on climate change, making tools like Climate Watch’s NDC Tracker even more essential to pushing countries to raise their ambition on climate action. Since 2014, Climate Watch data has been used by ministries from 95 countries around the world and directly cited in 25 NDCs.
Global Forest Watch and the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). In June 2023 the European Council formally adopted the EUDR, requiring companies operating in the EU to ensure that their sourcing is not causing deforestation. Although there’s no formal connection between Global Forest Watch and the EUDR, it’s hard to imagine the law existing without the groundbreaking platform’s release 10 years ago: the EUDR specifically asks companies to identify production locations so that forests can be monitored with satellite data.
LandGriffon open data enables corporate action on nature. Vizzuality’s own supply chain sustainability initiative LandGriffon published a suite of open data this year for accounting land, carbon and biodiversity impacts of agricultural production. We’ve already seen this data being used by multinational corporations, consulting firms, and sustainability advisors to assess nature’s impacts.
New product launches
Change takes time, data and knowledge are essential underlying ingredients to show what is and what is not possible. Here are a few new products that we contributed to in the past year that we’re excited to continue to support and see the impact they have.
Foodscapes. Agriculture is the way humanity depends most deeply on nature. It is responsible for nearly 25% of livelihoods around the world, and is the leading driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. The Nature Conservancy’s Foodscapes map reveals the complex mosaic of food production systems around the world, from subsistence farming to intensive production. It identifies the best ways to transform each in an inclusive, equitable and nature-positive way.
NatureBase. Tackling the climate crisis is only possible with the help of nature. The Nature4Climate coalition’s NatureBase platform shows the enormous 6.4-gigatons-of-carbon-per-year potential of where and how working with nature can address climate change, protect biodiversity, and benefit livelihoods. NatureBase aims to help governments and others identify nature-positive solutions for future growth and climate mitigation, and increase funding for these win-win opportunities.
SkyTruth 30x30 tracker. At the end of 2022, nearly every country on Earth agreed to protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean ecosystems by 2030 as part of the landmark UN Global Biodiversity Framework. SkyTruth’s 30x30 initiative is monitoring each country’s progress towards this global goal, starting with the world’s oceans.
Caribbean Climate Smart Map. The Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator supports initiatives that increase resilience to climate change, social development, and inclusive economic growth across 27 Caribbean nations through financing, innovation, and partnerships. Launched in December, the Climate Smart Map provides data on climate risks, vulnerabilities, and readiness and highlights projects and initiatives working to transform the region for a climate-smart future.
Open Earth Monitor. The advance of satellite and AI technology promises smarter, faster, science-based decisions about the use of Earth’s resources. The Open-Earth-Monitor, an EU-funded initiative, aims to democratize access to this technology and data, to accelerate innovation in earth-systems monitoring and support a greener future for Europe and for our planet. An alpha version of the Open Earth Monitor Hub was released in December.
In 2023, Vizzuality enabled significant strides to advance global impact within the environmental sector. From inclusive conservation planning and supporting financial reallocation for a low-carbon future to informing food security resilience and influencing climate commitments, our projects resonated with a shared purpose: driving positive change. We remain dedicated to leveraging design, technology, and data to empower our clients and partners to make a lasting impact on our planet.
We’re thankful for the opportunity to work with these great organizations. We’re excited to see the impact our partners and the wider sustainability community will achieve this year. Let’s keep up the momentum and ramp up the action.
