In most cases, a combination of approaches is required to address environmental challenges in a spatial setting – for example, coastal zones may require a combination of clean environment approaches (e.g., related to marine debris, water quality), green environment approaches (e.g., mangroves, upstream catchment protection), or blue environment (e.g., coastal fisheries, managing littoral drift, ocean plastics, etc.). In addition, there may be other environment-related considerations related to climate risks – both historical climate variability and risks such as floods, droughts, or coastal storms – and the increasing concern for climate change – with implications of rising temperatures, uncertain changes in precipitation, rising sea levels, and possible intensification of the hydrologic cycle and intensity of storms that could affect coastal areas.
Often, addressing these challenges holistically requires more integrated approaches that combine the related clean, green, and blue approaches in a spatial context (e.g., watershed, coastal zone or other landscape). These may appear to be complex, and often are, as they require many traditional sectoral institutions to work together but improve development outcomes through convergence of coordinated action with a shared vision.
There are an increasing number of complex challenges and solution areas that also demand more integrated approaches to be taken, across information, institutions and policies, and investments. These include Climate Smart Development, addressing both the need for decarbonization and adaptive resilience to climate variability and change, and the approach of circular economy that is gaining traction to help minimize waste and improve efficiency. In fact, any set of investments really need to be scrutinized from an environmental perspective to not only minimize adverse impacts but also create net environmental benefits. All these require an exploration across traditional disciplines or even environmental thematic perspectives to develop a more holistic approach for sustainability.
Technology can play a key role in facilitating such integrated approaches, especially through shared platforms for data, analytics, knowledge, learning, and outreach/collaboration. This can help modernize institutions and make them more effective in working with each other and leveraging global good practice. Investments can benefit from completely new approaches based on evolving technologies even when they are focused on nature-based solutions or leveraging indigenous traditional knowledge. The current COVID-19 pandemic has helped accelerate the use of technology, especially the transition to leveraging connectivity and online services for remote interaction and work, but also to monitor and manage the impacts of the pandemic.
The following sections give a peek into how technology can help address these issues in a more integrated manner.