United States

Statement of the United States for GEO Week and Ministerial Summit

The United States has been a long-standing supporter of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). We are pleased to be attending the 19th GEO Plenary and Ministerial Summit at this crucial juncture in the evolution of GEO as a premier intergovernmental organization and multi-sector partnership focused on the provision and use of EO-based actionable information at local, national, regional, and global levels. 

We applaud GEO’s visionary approach for the future as outlined in the GEO Post-2025 Strategy and the GEO Ministerial Declaration. The strategy aligns well with the vision that GEO should focus on actionable tools, information, and services co-produced to serve the needs of key stakeholders and decision makers, with an emphasis on those in low and middle-income countries. We stand by GEO’s vision of providing equitable access to Earth Intelligence for All. We encourage GEO to strengthen its connections across local, national, and regional levels to further maximize EO-based solutions where they are most needed.

GEO is a unique global partnership, both multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary. At its core, it is driven by dedicated participants across multiple sectors who enable actionable information for critical social, environmental, and economic decisions that impact lives. As an intergovernmental organization, GEO leverages the commitments of member-states and helps form diverse partnerships across multiple sectors through the robust participation of NGOs, academic institutions, research organizations, and commercial sector partners. These collaborations all contribute extensively to activities in the Work Programme, Working Groups, and cloud credit programs that have made a substantial impact and created societal benefits.

The United States proudly contributes to numerous collaborations that GEO has enabled and advanced. We are delighted to announce that the GEO Water Sustainability Initiative (GEOGloWS) Streamflow forecast service was awarded $2 million USD in support of the President's Emergency Plan on Adaptation and Resilience (PREPARE). This effort provides early-warning services to up to 11 African countries and supports the World Meteorological Organization-led Early Warning For All Initiative. 

GEOGloWS is a joint initiative driven by the types of partnerships that exemplify the value of GEO. It brings together partners from government agencies (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the U.S. Agency for International Development), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), academic institutions, such as Brigham Young University, SERVIR regional partner institutions, such as the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), private sector partners, such as Aquaveo and Esri, and the national agencies involved in implementing GEOGloWS to support users on the ground. Among other places, this has already been successfully done in Malawi. GEOGloWS is a strong, demonstrable example that reflects the vision of the GEO Post-2025 Strategy. 

Notwithstanding, it is important to highlight our long-standing support for GEO Flagships, Initiatives, and Working Groups, such as GEOGLAM, GFOI, GEOBON, GEO Blue Planet, EO4SDG, and GEO Health Community of Practice, among others. These efforts continue to deliver impact with their users and enable early warning systems, generating critical monitoring tools to support commitments made under Multilateral Environmental Agreements and in support of international organizations. 

We also highlight our long-standing support of regional GEOs, in particular AmeriGEO. We take this opportunity to acknowledge growing Inter-American cooperation through AmeriGEO that is increasing national and institutional capacity to leverage Earth observations for evidence informed decision-making. The United States welcomes Trinidad and Tobago to GEO and as the newest member of AmeriGEO.

The United States is proud to be associated with the Latin America and Caribbean Initiative (LACI) for climate risk assessments, which is a capacity exchange program that involves representatives from 14 countries in the Americas. Four LACI pilot efforts announced this summer involve work with  indigenous people groups in Amazonia, data portals, and geospatial tools for climate-related decisions with goals to scale them for regional application. 

The United States is a steadfast champion for open data and open science. These endeavors create a more inclusive environment for greater participation in the creation and use of information for knowledge and decision making. The broader inclusion of voices spurs more ideas and greater innovation in serving our collective challenges. In particular, the United States is proud of the collaboration with France, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the development and launch of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite this past year. Openly provided SWOT supports insights and decisions on the availability of Earth's freshwater resources and our changing ocean and coasts. 

Building on commitments endorsed in the GEO Knowledge Statement, the United States highlights our recent 2023 announcement to provide continued public access to historical and new digital elevation models created using commercial imagery collected over the Arctic and Antarctic through 2032. Additionally, the U.S is providing the newly released TanDEM-X global data suite which includes global streams, basins, and hydrologically-conditioned elevation data. The dataset provides over 18 million rivers and streams of which 5 million are being integrated into GEOGloWS streamflow forecasting services to improve at-scale forecasting.

Furthermore, the United States highlights the efforts of GEO member countries, participating organizations, and associate member contributions over the past 20 years to build and advance National and Global Spatial Data Infrastructures to enable GEO data infrastructure. The U.S. is confident that the GEOSS Infrastructure and Development Task Team, under its renewed mandate, can evaluate GEO’s data infrastructure capabilities in light of the GEO Post-2025 Strategy. 

In addition the United States highlights the innovative approach undertaken by GEO to develop incubator projects focused on nexus areas that stem from the GEO Work Programme, including the Global Ecosystem Atlas and the Global Heat Resilience Service. The United States is especially pleased to have been a major contributor to the vision, science foundation, and planning of these incubator projects, and looks forward to a strong participation in their future development.

The U.S. is encouraged by these cross-GEO collaborations that help to showcase the value-added of GEO. They demonstrate where GEO, as a leading organization in the field of EO, can leverage multiple partnerships and bring diverse stakeholders together in the delivery of critical Earth-information based services. As we continue advancing GEO’s work with the strategic engagement priorities, we look forward to the evolution of these projects, and other innovative approaches in the implementation of the GEO Post-2025 Strategy.  

The United States stands firmly in support of the equitable and inclusive vision outlined in the GEO Post-2025 Strategy. In particular we want to highlight the need to engage people across all geographies including Indigenous peoples and youth around the world. We want to ensure the capabilities advanced by GEO are co-developed by those in greatest need of these EO-based services. We wish to empower the voices of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems to work as part of the GEO community as we move to implement this new vision and operating model for GEO. 

With this new vision, the United States wants to emphasize the critical need to ensure the programmatic and financial sustainability of GEO. These are necessary in order to carry out the ambitious agenda including providing equitable access to EO-based information and services for the users and communities with the greatest need for these applications. We encourage GEO to explore innovative financing mechanisms and partnerships in order to leverage and maximize our intergovernmental contributions to GEO. We applaud the Ministerial Declaration for noting the pursuit of multi-user license agreements for those who have the greatest need for this data. 

We encourage existing GEO efforts to innovate and work with all stakeholders across multiple sectors to identify key opportunities and priorities across the Earth observation value chain to maximize the impact of GEO. In this respect the United States fully supports the work of the GEO Secretariat, the GEO Programme Board, and the GEO Executive Committee in carrying out and implementing this ambitious vision, understanding that this new direction will bring transformation and evolve GEO’s model to reflect the future goals we have outlined during this Ministerial Summit.