Developer & organisation

The tool is managed by UNEP’s Global Resource Information Database (GRID-Geneva) in conjunction with the MapX platform.

Target audience

Environmental analysts, policymakers, development agencies, climate and nature risk practitioners, and researchers seeking geospatial insight on ecological pressures.

Functionality & features

• Provides an interactive global map of environmental “hotspots” categorized by themes such as ecosystems, resource extraction, urbanisation, climate stress, disasters and conflicts.
• Enables temporal comparisons via satellite imagery (compare different years or spectral bands) to detect environmental change.
• Offers metadata for each hotspot, allowing drilling down into local pressures and drivers.

Relevance to finance professionals

• Assists in nature-risk and climate-risk screening by highlighting regions under high environmental stress
• Supports due diligence and ESG integration, particularly for investments or infrastructure in sensitive geographies
• Helps firms anticipate regulatory, physical or reputational risks associated with ecological degradation or resource conflicts
• Can inform scenario analysis and stress testing by overlaying hotspot data with asset or portfolio exposure.