Wang Wenbin, spokesperson of China's Foreign Ministry Photo: VCG

The donation of the 2020 version of the Global Land Cover Dataset is a global public good provided by China on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UN), which shows China's commitment to multilateralism and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at Thursday's media briefing.

Global land cover distribution and its changes help monitor the ecological environment, climate change research and sustainable development planning. In 2014, China donated to the United Nations the first open-access, high-resolution map of Earth's land cover at 30-meter resolution (both 2000 version and 2010 version), which was the first high-tech public good that China provided the UN, and has achieved remarkable results. 

Compared to the previous versions, the complete surface coverage data of 30 meters in Antarctica was generated for the first time in the new version, and the information gap of surface coverage in the high latitudes of the north latitude were filled, realizing the full coverage of the global land surface, Wang said.

In addition, image data sources are more abundant, and data quality improved, he added.

The data in these three versions provide a snapshot of the global land surface every 10 years since this century, reflecting 20 years of global land use and landscape pattern changes.

"It will provide support for in-depth research on global change, implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda, and improvement of the global governance system. It will also play an important role in addressing global challenges in resources, environment and ecology," Wang noted.

Under the UN framework, China will continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with other parties in relevant fields, and in particular, provide support and assistance to developing countries, to make new contributions to the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals, and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, he said.