This is a unique program to support your national climate plans with a deep understanding of your country’s spatial climate assets and liabilities: the territorial sources and sinks that are managed in land use, land cover and ocean based activities, and in this way can become subject to categorization, stock-taking, forward planning and monitoring. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow easy access to globally, nationally and locally available digital map resources, remote sensing and satellite images in emissions abatement and other forms of spatial digital climate planning. Spatial climate assets are natural ecosystems on land and in the sea that are essential in absorbing and managing emissions. Spatial climate liabilities are emission sources, in agricultural, energy, industry, settlement, rivers and lakes, and other areas.
The Spatial Climate Action approach is aimed at nations and states who wish to activate their spatial climate assets and manage their liabilities in the pursuit of their NDCs - and any other national, regional and local climate aims. It is also available and useful at state, county and local level, so it can be used to integrate plans at these jurisdictional levels. We have scientifically devised, and both qualitatively and quantitatively support the deployment of Spatial Climate Actions mapped on globally available geographic information systems in ways that allow the quantification of carbon footprint reduction benefits in relative and in absolute terms. State-of-the-art, easy-to-use online applications have been developed for this purpose, and are offered here for use in this trial.
These Spatial Climate Actions and their combined national Programs can be applied as selected for the respective territory and time-frame at hand, across a number of what we call Spatial Climate Domains: from agriculture to energy and industry, to forests, settlements, transport, and onto surface water systems, and ocean areas. With the program’s advisory guidance, or simply on the national team's own account, Spatial Climate Action programs can be assembled, illustrated, studied, tested, costed and devised as implementable agenda in this way. A National Spatial Resilience Guide can also be produced in this way, accompanied by this powerful climate resilience planning tool.
Climate mitigation efforts can often also yield powerful outcomes for adaptation. In this sense the program’s approach serves both immediate and long-term climate resilience objectives, as well as the direct combating of climate change, through the levers afforded by physical space on land and water.
This program will run from 15 January 2025 to 15 May 2025.
There are no hard eligibility criteria other than relevant affiliation with a non-commercial agency, department, non-governmental organisation, partner university or other institution associated with or representing a country engaged in the NDC process.
While this is not a hard eligibility criterion, participation is likely to be eased and enhanced by resources and skills in pertinent fields such as geography, environmental planning, regional design, spatial ecology, energy infrastructure, urban and transport systems planning, agriculture/forestry, oceanography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and access to national and/or global databases and cartographic stores relevant to terrestrial and marine geospatial planning.