Blog / February 16, 2022
The UK has world-leading Earth Observation (EO) capability, from research and early mission development, to exploitation of data, and the creation of end-user applications and services of established quality with well calibrated and validated information. The UK is a strong advocate of user engagement and co-design in the development of EO products and services and acknowledges GEO’s significant successes in promoting open data and improving its availability and access.
Earth observations are increasingly embedded in the UK’s environmental policy and its implementation, including the 2021 Environment Act and the 25 Year Environment Plan to improve England’s air and water quality, and protect plants, trees, and wildlife species and their habitats. The UK is committed to combatting climate change and recognises the important role EO can play. In June 2019, the UK government set a legally binding target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions from across the UK economy by 2050 and in April 2021 set the world’s most ambitious climate change target into law to reduce emissions by 78% by 2035compared to 1990 levels.
GEO’s priority engagement areas, the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the New Urban Agenda, align with the UK’s ambitions to combat climate change, reduce the impact of natural disasters such as flooding, and improve the health and wellbeing of people and the environment. The global COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of a One Health approach, and the UK recognises the interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment and how EO can contribute to this understanding.
With GEO since the start
The UK has been part of GEO since it was first established in 2005 and has been heavily involved in its governance and programmes, with contributions to the Executive Committee, representatives on the Programme Board, an active participant in EuroGEO, and involved in a number of working groups, including the GEO Climate Change Working Group (GEO CC-WG).
The UK has representatives in the GEO Secretariat, constantly striving to maintain its strong engagement in existing and emerging priorities.
The UK has always been a strong supporter of GEO’s advocacy for open data. The UK is ranked joint first in the Open Data Barometer which is a global measure of how governments publish and use open data.
Bringing GEO’s international practice into the national sphere
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is the UK’s policy lead for GEO with a strong voice for user communities. DEFRA works closely with the UK Space Agency, who are the policy leads for satellite EO and is supported by a UK GEO/CEOS Office hosted by the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).
A significant success for the use of EO is DEFRA’s Earth Observation Centre of Excellence which involves organizations across government enabling EO to become an increasingly essential feature in delivering environment policy, farming support policy, and response to emergencies, including flooding.
“The UK continues to be actively involved in GEO with contributions to governance, working groups and many of the Work Programme initiatives and activities. The UK's significant engagement with and contributions to the GEO Work Programme reflect how wide-ranging and relevant, both domestically and internationally, the Work Programme is to the UK. Additionally, this engagement has brought significant benefits back to the UK public sector, academia and industry through building international collaborations, discussions on analysis ready data and open science, and lessons learnt from other countries.”
-Dr Robert Bradburne, UK GEO Principal and Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK
With GEO since the start
The UK has been part of GEO since it was first established in 2005 and has been heavily involved in its governance and programmes, with contributions to the Executive Committee, representatives on the Programme Board, an active participant in EuroGEO, and involved in a number of working groups, including the GEO Climate Change Working Group (GEO CC-WG).
The UK has representatives in the GEO Secretariat, constantly striving to maintain its strong engagement in existing and emerging priorities.
The UK has always been a strong supporter of GEO’s advocacy for open data. The UK is ranked joint first in the Open Data Barometer which is a global measure of how governments publish and use open data.
Bringing GEO’s international practice into the national sphere
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is the UK’s policy lead for GEO with a strong voice for user communities. DEFRA works closely with the UK Space Agency, who are the policy leads for satellite EO and is supported by a UK GEO/CEOS Office hosted by the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO).
A significant success for the use of EO is DEFRA’s Earth Observation Centre of Excellence which involves organizations across government enabling EO to become an increasingly essential feature in delivering environment policy, farming support policy, and response to emergencies, including flooding.
“The UK continues to be actively involved in GEO with contributions to governance, working groups and many of the Work Programme initiatives and activities. The UK's significant engagement with and contributions to the GEO Work Programme reflect how wide-ranging and relevant, both domestically and internationally, the Work Programme is to the UK. Additionally, this engagement has brought significant benefits back to the UK public sector, academia and industry through building international collaborations, discussions on analysis ready data and open science, and lessons learnt from other countries.”
-Dr Robert Bradburne, UK GEO Principal and Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK
The UK has a strong EO academic community with research centres such as NCEO and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) providing world-class capability in EO science. To support collaboration the UK Joint GEO/CEOS Office has established a coordination platform for all interested organizations in the UK who participate in the GEO and CEOS groups that cover topics such as climate, disasters, oceans, data, and capacity building.
Through its strong membership of the European Space Agency, the UK drives joint ambitions in the GEO area from building the technology to making the data usable for society. Since 2009 the UK has hosted the European Space Agency Climate Office in Harwell, Oxfordshire which aims to increase the availability and use of global, satellite-based EO data for decision-making.
Getting involved in a full range of GEO Work Programme activities
Engaging on climate change:
The UK has welcomed GEO’s focus on climate change and has strong examples of the public sector, research, and private industry working together. The UK space sector is at the forefront of global efforts to create and use trusted satellite data for climate action for all. Space4Climate, chaired by the UK Space Agency and hosted by NCEO, is a group consisting of government, academic, third sector, and industry experts. Space4Climate supports the UK’s world-leading climate community in delivering, sustaining, and making use of trusted climate intelligence from space through schemes such as Embedded Researcher placements using EO to increase resilience of the UK food supply chain.
The GEO CC-WG was created to develop a strategy to advance the use of EO in support of climate change adaptation and mitigation. This includes actions related to the pillars of the Paris Agreement adopted under the UNFCCC and to support the translation of the Canberra Declaration within the GEO Work Programme. The UK has two representatives in the GEO CC-WG, from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and from PML/NCEO. Their role is to ensure an effective interface of GEO work programme activities to the work of UNFCCC and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as supporting GEO member parties on EO aspects, with an emphasis on the uptake of EO.
“Through our participation, as representative of a GEO Member country, we bring in experience on how the UK is working with EO to support climate-related actions nationally and in collaboration with other countries, as well as learn from other Member countries about their EO-involvement in national processes especially with respect to the Paris Agreement. Ultimately, I hope the GEO CC-WG activities will help to raise awareness on the potential of EO to support nations’ climate actions and allow them to increase their ambitions.”
-Marie-Fanny Racault, UEA Research Fellow, PML Honorary Fellow, and member of GEO CC-WG
Through its representatives in the GEO Secretariat, the UK is actively forging new links between GEO and the transition to ‘green’ finance economies, with support from DEFRA and Space4Climate members. The focus being to demonstrate that making EO data accessible, understandable, and available to both the public and private sectors will help support policy and investment decisions to incorporate environmental issues such as reduction of biodiversity, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. Relevant Government ministries, investors, banks, insurers, and the wider GEO community will be engaged to generate collaborations and make use of the opportunities EO provides for climate finance.
Engaging on Disaster Risk Reduction:
The Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency of Great Britain, funded a UK secondment into the GEO Secretariat from 2018-2020. The secondee focused on leading and delivering GEO’s strategic engagement on disaster risk reduction specifically focused on the UN’s Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
‘Over the course of the Secondment I was able to shape and support GEO Work Programme activities to make sure the requirements of the Sendai Framework were covered as much as possible, both at a Member State level and within the wider UN System. At a programme level I championed and organised the GEO Disaster Risk Reduction Working Group which now has nearly 90 members from across the globe who are focused on developing and implementing coherent and cross-cutting approaches to advance the use of Earth observations in support of countries’ disaster risk reduction and resilience efforts.’
-James Norris, International Policy Advisor at Ordnance Survey, Secondee to GEO Secretariat 2018-2020
Engaging on Agriculture and Forests:
The UK has provided considerable Official Development Assistance funding, along with a representative from University College London to another GEO Flagship Programme: Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring Initiative, or GEOGLAM. GEOGLAM was initiated to increase market transparency and improve food security by using EO to provide near real-time data on agricultural production through initiatives such as Crop Monitor. This supports proactive and informed decision making at national, regional, and global scales and compliments other UK research, such as the Space4Climate food security project mentioned above. Funding from the UK has contributed to the development plan for the GEO Knowledge Hub, implementation of agricultural monitoring tools on Amazon cloud services based on the Sen2Agri system, and to develop a ‘click and go’ application of the Sen2Agri system that can be more easily implemented in settings with limited computing expertise and capacity. In future UK contributions will build on this interest and magnify the impact of previous work by improving access to the GEO Knowledge Hub, training materials, and in situ data.
Via BEIS, the UK is also part of the global leadership team for the GEO Flagship programme Global Forest Observations Initiative, providing a scientifically-reviewed framework and international coordination for forest monitoring and carbon accounting
Engaging on Water:
The UK has a strong background in marine and freshwater science. Five UK research institutes are part of the Partnership for Observations of the Global Ocean, which is a GEO Participating Organization and one of the founding members of the GEO Blue Planet Initiative. A number of UK scientists are involved, including from the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, in leading a GEO Blue Planet working-group on water-associated diseases which published a journal article about ocean-colour remote-sensing data to monitor Vibrio cholera in Remote Sensing in 2019.
A number of UK researchers are also involved in GEO’s AquaWatch initiative to improve the coordination, delivery, and utilisation, of water quality information. Scotland’s International Environment Centre (SIEC) at the University of Stirling is the European Node for the AquaWatch initiative. Stirling led the UKRI NERC Funded Globolakes project that revolutionised how we use Ocean Colour remote sensing to monitor optically complex inland waters and host the global community data base for biogeo-optical properties of inland and transitional environments (Limnades).
The G7 has launched, on 21 May 2021, the Ocean Decade Navigation Plan, establishing a framework through which the G7 will collaborate and advance its collective work on ocean science, ocean observing and ocean action, utilising EO to increase understanding of human impacts on the ocean, help deliver meaningful targets, and implement key international commitments to coincide with the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. During the UK’s G7 Presidency there is a commitment to convene and collaborate both on the Navigation Plan and on the further implementation of the G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative (‘FSOI’) launched in 2016 under Japan’s G7 Presidency, endeavouring to advance three key areas of the FSOI’s global ocean observing work to support the UN Ocean Decade societal outcomes of a ‘predicted’, ‘accessible’, and an ‘inspiring and engaging’ ocean.
Other areas of engagement:
Through a number of academic institutes, the UK is involved in the Global Wildfire Information System, GEO Human Planet and GEO Wetlands. These initiatives help to create solutions to global problems and provide a strong base to identify knowledge gaps and reduce duplication of effort across the globe.
Highlight on the UK COP26 Presidency
The UK, as host of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) in partnership with Italy (November 2021) welcomed the commitment of all countries gathered in Glasgow to achieve international cooperation to deliver the Paris Agreement and build on previous and new COP decisions to advance climate action. As part of the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC calls on Parties to promote and cooperate in Research and Systematic Observation (RSO) of the climate system and the development of data archives, including through support to existing international programmes and networks. The UK welcomed GEO’s active engagement in the RSO work and also its contribution to both the UNFCCC-led Earth Information Day and the Earth Information for Climate Action event convened by the UK Presidency, demonstrating the critical role that GEO plays in the international climate observations field.
The UNFCCC’s Earth Information Day provided an opportunity for exchanging information on the state of the global climate system and developments in systematic observation. Its organisation was guided by previous mandates on systematic observation and submissions. The UK, as host of COP26, sought to enhance the role of EO in identifying and illustrating the challenges posed by climate change, as well as providing the evidence around which robust decisions and strong commitments could be made. This was achieved through the Earth Information for Climate Action – Reflections of the UK Presidency event, where experience was shared using examples of robust scientific evidence, including EO, to inform policy making and showcasing climate science expertise. This demonstrated the extent of knowledge, understanding, and capacity in climate science and innovation that supports ambitious mitigation and adaptation actions to reach net zero emissions.
The role of EO in informing policy and decision making to assist climate resilience and adaptation, understanding the impacts of climate change, supporting a zero-carbon future, and linking natural capital assets to their economic value was clearly visible through a range of events and interventions across the COP fortnight, with GEO and UK expertise contributing significantly to many of these. The UK looks forward to continuing its work with GEO in responding to the commitments made by the international community at COP26, especially around forests, net zero and adaptation. COP26 allowed the UK, GEO, and international EO community, including the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), alongside the technology sector and non-state actors, to look at how they can develop and support countries in accessing standards and guidance for progressing their EO programmes. During its COP Presidency year, and beyond, the UK will continue to share best practices, with the aim to encourage uptake and investment in EO for formal reporting mechanisms, plan for significant steps forward in calibration and validation, and facilitate international collaborations with public and private sector actors to improve scientific understanding.
Supporting countries to expand their use of Earth Observations
The UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme (IPP) has utilised the UK space sector’s capabilities in satellite technology to deliver sustainable economic, societal, and environmental benefits to countries across the world by tackling global challenges such as climate/disaster resilience, food security, fisheries management, health, and land-use monitoring.
The majority of IPP projects use satellite EO and are already demonstrating real impact, for example:
IPP won the ‘Better Satellite World’ Award in 2019 and 2020 GEO SDG award in recognition of delivery of innovative solutions to development challenges and measurable impact on SDGs to countries around the world using Earth observations. D-MOSS, a dengue fever forecasting project that is part of GEO’s EO4HEALTH Initiative, was also awarded under the not-for-profit category for its achievement of sustainable development outcomes in South East Asia, and has since won numerous awards including a Digital Technology Leaders Award and three UK IT Industry Awards.
The UK’s expertise and climate missions build upon a rich climate EO space heritage spanning over half a century, and the importance of EO to meet global challenges will only grow. The UK, with GEO, supports the use of EO through increased collaborations to meet these challenges.
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