Addressing the devastating effects of climate change has become the most urgent need for governments and businesses today making the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) "the most critical global climate change event in the decade of climate action".
COP26
COP26 is scheduled for 31 October - 12 November and will be hosted by the United Kingdom in Glasgow. It is pegged to be the most important COP since the historical Paris agreement was signed in 2015. Many people fear that if leaders don’t commit to bold steps now, the world will barrel toward dangerous levels of warming creating a lot of pressure on the negotiations to deliver meaningful commitments.
“I am more determined than ever to work for 2020 to be the year in which all countries commit to do what science tells us is necessary.” António Guterres, UN Secretary-General
What is at stake at COP26?
COP26 is critical in the fight against climate change for multiple reasons:
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Global emissions are at an all-time high and none of the countries are on track to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement. According to data from Climate TRACE, global GHG emissions have reached a whopping 303.96 billion tonnes CO2E as of 2020.
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Climate and weather related disasters have aggravated severely since COP25. Since 2015, we have seen the six hottest years on record; above-average storm activity during each of the last six Atlantic hurricane seasons. Additionally, according to a recent report, in only a 6 month period in 2020, 51.6 million people were impacted by 84 disasters from floods, droughts, and storms in countries already struggling with the coronavirus pandemic.
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In addition to the surge in climate related disasters, recent progress in science and research clearly indicates that 2020s are humanity’s “last chance” to do something meaningful about climate change. In fact, the findings in the recent report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, were called “a code red for humanity,” by Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations.
Bringing our expertise to COP26
The world of climate action is still distraught with self-reported data, semi-greenwashing and navigating without hard, quantitative, actual, deliverable data is hard.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, President of the United Nations General Assembly
The solution to this problem is exactly what Blue Sky brings to the table by extracting near real-time environmental insights from satellite data and providing them via accessible APIs. We achieve this by ingesting TBs of satellite data, cleaning, organizing and parsing this data and then adding our proprietary data models on top of that.
We have also recently launched a ground-breaking dataset on GHG emissions from biomass fires - Zuri. This data for Zuri is highly granular, regularly updated and provides stark insights into the global emission trends.
For instance, Russia's total emissions for 2021 (till September) are higher than those of Brazil and the US combined. This can be attributed to 2021 widely being cited as the highest emissions year for fires in Russia.
Meet Our COP Delegation
Representing Blue Sky Analytics will be Abhilasha Purwar, Founder and CEO and Yashika Maheshwari, Strategy Lead.
Abhilasha Purwar, CEO & Founder, Blue Sky Analytics
A Yale and IIT alumnus and former Fulbright scholar, Abhilasha is a force of nature. She founded Blue Sky Analytics in 2018 with her brother Kshitij Purwar with the aim of building a catalogue of Environmental Datasets by leveraging Satellite data, AI and cloud.
When she's not working, you'll often find Abhilasha travelling, climbing, surfing, open water swimming, trekking, dancing and basically engaged in any other fun activity you can imagine.
Reach out to Abhilasha at Abhilasha@blueskyhq.in
Yashika Maheshwari, Strategy Lead, Blue Sky Analytics
A lawyer from the National Law University in Jodhpur, Yashika is essentially our in-house do-it-all. She handles strategy at Blue Sky Analytics.
Just like Abhilasha, Yashika too has been stung by the travelling bug and is found making the most of our remote setup by working from exotic locations.
Reach out to Yashika at Yashika@blueskyhq.in
Will you be at COP26 or around Glasgow? Would love to get to know you!
