The Report on Big Earth Data in Support of the Sustainable Development Goals (2022), prepared by the Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was released by the Chinese side at the Ministerial Meeting of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative (GDI) held in New York on September 20 local time.

Covering seven SDGs including Zero Hunger (SDG 2), Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6), Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7), Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11), Climate Action (SDG 13), Life below Water (SDG 14), and Life on Land (SDG 15), the Report presents 42 cases where Big Earth Data was used to monitor and evaluate 25 targets and to study the interactions among SDG indicators and their integrated evaluations. 

These cases demonstrate SDG monitoring and assessment outcomes at global, regional, national, and local scales from three aspects of data products, methods and models, and decision support. 

They can inform decisions and represent innovative practice of using big data to advance the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as GDI. 

The report also evaluated the progress of 56 environment-related SDG indicators in China from 2010 to 2021. The results showed that China's environmental indicators were greatly improved compared with 2015, the start year of the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda. Nearly half of the 56 environmental indicators evaluated in China had achieved the SDGs ahead of schedule.

It is the fourth straight year since 2019 that China releases the Report series, which was drafted by the research team from the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals as well as the Big Earth Data Science Engineering Project (CASEarth).