Description :
More than 30% of our planet is covered by forests. Unfortunately, they are becoming increasingly endangered. Deforestation is destroying 18 million acres of land every year, with a range of adverse effects threatening living conditions globally. At the same time, deforestation accounts for more than 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. Growing populations, rising demand for food along with promotion of a low-carbon economy has translated to an unprecedented pressure on forest ecosystems worldwide; either to take more land for agriculture or for using wood products and fiber for energy, housing or packaging. In turn, this leads to accelerated deforestation, forest degradation and forest conversion.

Airbus and the EarthWorm Foundation have joined their expertise to develop in 2017 Starling, a global digital service initially developed to verify no-deforestation and responsible sourcing commitments made by the private sector. Using Copernicus Sentinel-2 data -between others- the product provide the evolution of land cover and include commodity-specific production data.
Today Starling also supports States, governments and regional organisations which want to accelerate and deliver no-deforestation commitments. Starling is designed to support the action plan that States will deem best to achieve their strategy, should it be due diligence, bilateral or multilateral cooperation, impact assessment or certification mechanisms.

Addressing a variety of actors all concerned by Green initiatives especially the control of deforestation, Starling is the product bringing everyone –public and private actors- around the table. Beyond this service is also the story of the use of digitization for a greener world, the lessons learnt of addressing such a market and how we can imagine future developments and cooperation around deforestation monitoring.

Allow us tell you the incredible adventure of a service aiming at saving the Forest.

Speaker:
Wendy Carrara (Senior Manager for Digital and European Institutions)