Strata is a web-based, easy-to-use data platform to support practitioners and policymakers to identify and track environmental and climate stresses potentially driving threats to peace and security. Strata allows analysts, policy makers and practitioners to access and use climate security data in their daily work, including to raise awareness of converging risks, to design and prioritise policy and programming responses, and to monitor and evaluate interventions.
The Strata project is led by the United Nations Environment Programme, in partnership with the European Union and the Government of Norway. Strata has been developed through a collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, EarthBlox, Google Earth Engine and the Group on Earth Observations.
Earth Blox is a no-code planetary-data solutions-builder. Earth Blox allow users to create actionable insights from Google’s Earth Engine and other sources of planetary data in a code-free yet customisable way, without expert knowledge or local storage requirements. Strata is built using Earth Blox. Other applications are possible for agriculture, nature-based solutions, ESG, insurance, capacity development, teaching, and more. Explore Earth Blox here.
Across the globe, the impacts of climate change, environmental degradation and the mismanagement of natural resources are undermining livelihoods and damaging essential infrastructure. In already fragile or crisis-affected contexts, these impacts can exacerbate existing socio-economic risks in ways that can lead to increased competition over scarce resources, displacement, and conflict. At the same time, violent conflict and political instability can undermine climate change adaptation efforts, leaving vulnerable communities poorer, less resilient, and ill-equipped to cope with the effects of climate change.
The UN Security Council, the African Union, the G7, and other organisations have called for improved analyses of interlinked climate change and security risks to inform policy and programmes in crisis-affected contexts. Up to now, however, the capacity for data-driven assessments of converging environmental and security risks has remained in the hands of a limited set of experts. There is an urgent need to democratise environmental and climate security analysis by making such capacity available to practitioners and policy makers without prior technical know-how.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its partners have developed Strata to enhance monitoring, analysis, and early warning of environmental and climate-related security risks. This web-based, easy-to-use data platform supports practitioners and policymakers to identify and track environmental and climate stresses potentially driving threats to peace and security.
Strata allows analysts, policy makers and practitioners to access and use climate security data in their daily work, including to raise awareness of converging risks, to design and prioritise policy and programming responses, and to monitor and evaluate interventions.
Rapid identification of climate and environmental stress hotspots (where and when)
Overlay with structural socio-economic risks that potentially drive displacement, social unrest, conflict, or maladaptation
Science-based insights for end-users on area-specific risk reduction, climate change adaptation and resilience-building solutions