The Life Map is aiming to help humanity reach 2050 sustainably, through the collection and consolidation of valuable data aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. By providing a standardised format for the different metrics that sustain life to be understood, the data can be democratised globally, across global zones, and within global communities. The information is designed to accelerate and amplify the activities of ambitious organisations around the globe working towards the SDGs.
Whether you are involved in policy, resource management, or education, whether you have an interest in a single issue or complex systems, and whether this is at a local, national, or global level, The Life Map is designed to help the global community sustain life for today’s generations – and tomorrow’s.
The environment and Earth’s regenerative capacity is dependent on a stable climate that is regulated by the natural world across the marine areas, land, and freshwater. This capacity has enabled humanity to undertake exhaustive, industrial activities providing food, energy, and materials for settlements and the manufacture of products. Around 1970, as the global population passed 3.3bn people, these exhaustive processes began to outpace Earth’s regenerative processes. This is not a matter of exceeding planetary boundaries but rather the steady reduction of our ability to sustain life.
There are many facets that sustain life and many local monitoring schemes have highlighted their declines at local level, with their cumulative data shaping international policy. For the environment, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio was one of the first convenings to address three main declines in Climate Stability, Biodiversity, and Land due to desertification. There were grand ambitions at this and following global conferences, together with national initiatives, to halt these declines and to encourage restoration. However, without a clear transition from strategy to responsibility and action, and with the issues treated in isolation rather than as a holistic societal process, the rates of loss have been continuous.
Materials for democratising data and advancing truth
Unfortunately, too many people take for granted the components that sustain life or, worse still, are completely unaware of them. For those that are aware of the components and their associated problems, the nominally open data about climate issues is often neither accessible nor understandable.
The Life Map provides data in graphs and heat maps, showing relative values to help users to comprehend and accurately visualise the scale and severity of issues. This data is presented alongside relevant collection methodologies and supported by formal endorsements from the relevant science organisations and associated government departments. This approach ensures the use of the data in this format passes a highly regulated system of quality control.
The Life Map enables the value and privacy of data to be protected in a format that enables the presentation of summary information for different datasets and from different organisations in a consistent format. The format enables information about the data to be presented in a sequence for strategy across global maps, for responsibility within global zones, and for activity in the global communities within each of the global zones as part of a continuous, organised process.
Involving everyone, aggregating activity, and continuity
The material produced in The Life Map is designed to be freely available for use by people within the policy sector, those involved in resource management, and throughout the education system to help all of us improve our climate understanding and the consequences of our choices.
The privacy and value of the collected data is protected, as is the data about people who access Life Map information. For those accessing the information and the methodologies, there is the opportunity to contribute data, whether from extensive community science or focussed scientific trials, with the data being processed to calibrate and acknowledge performance and change, and to increase knowledge exchange.
Information can be submitted by individuals or, if within a managed project, in summary format by the project manager. The Life Map protects the contact details of these people but enables enquiries through The Life Map to be forwarded so that industry connections can be made. Connection and collaboration with communities across the globe helps develop support, momentum, and continuity.
The material for the education sector is particularly important, as it enables schools to access information about their community as part of the formal and informal learning process and encourages pupils to continue to access information about their community and its wider context, reflected throughout their lifetime.
What next?
The Life Map offers environmental projects and initiatives the opportunity to elevate their objectives and deliverables within a wider framework of national and international goals. This aids data collection to calibrate performance and improve knowledge and experience exchange with similar projects. The format is designed to accelerate and amplify results for participants and funders alike.
It also presents this activity in the wider context of how we manage resources more effectively and choose to organise society with material provided across communities for policymakers, resource managers, and the education sector helping the ongoing need to sustain life. By utilising The Life Map as a rich resource, which compiles data across locations and for different issues, the global community has a far greater chance of coping with the decline of the components that sustain life, and adapting to population increases and their associated demands that will be present over the next twenty to fifty years.
Lead image: Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Q2 2025 Climate Solutions Magazine
We encourage you to read this edition of the F20 Climate Solutions Magazine in full. The articles centre on the transformative impacts that can result from incorporating lived experiences into climate action, whether that be by approaching activism through a gendered lens, or by using decades of evidence to boldly shape national environmental policy.
Expand the preview below and immerse yourself in these thought-provoking articles.