The United Kingdom (UK) continues to provide international leadership in Earth Observation (EO) technology, research and delivery by convening partners, shaping standards and translating EO into services that support climate resilience and sustainable growth. The UK has just concluded a year chairing CEOS where the theme was Unlocking EO for society.

The data we derive from EO is integral for monitoring and responding to several items on the National Risk Register. This includes food security, natural and environmental hazards, disaster response and ecosystem collapse, both in the UK and globally. UK leadership on climate datasets (such as the Climate Change Initiative’s Open Data Portal) contributes to the Essential Climate Variables – over 55, foundational parameters required to accurately monitor the health of our planet – which can only be measured on a global scale from space. Space-based EO offers unmatched data coverage and frequency, and when combined with ground-based and in situ sensors enables real-time insights into land use, biodiversity, water levels and emissions, all of which are crucial for combatting climate and biodiversity crises.

EO is important for our economic growth and national security. EO underpins the UK Government’s clean energy superpower mission by enabling targeted interventions on air quality, optimising solar deployment, identification of methane leakages and informing urban planning to create safer, healthier places. The UK is also supporting efforts to better protect citizens, including adopting the Kananaskis Wildfire Charter as a G7 commitment to transform how we prevent, prepare for and recover from wildfires.

The UK remains a strong member of the European Space Agency Earth Observation programmes leading missions, data management and data exploitation actitiveis with other Member States.  

Our participation in the Copernicus Programme supports the UK’s ability to contribute to, and helps steer, global EO capability for climate and environmental action. Copernicus remains central to international efforts to address environmental and climate change-related challenges. UK involvement enables our EO sector the ability to contribute to the design and deliver Copernicus technology, operate and manage data, and develop services and data products using the Copernicus space system.

Alongside Copernicus data, the commercial EO data market has a critical role to play in delivering societal impact and benefit via its use in critical UK public sector policy and operational areas. To that end, the UK is exploring options for collective licensing arrangements and capability support to unlock more impact from this rapidly-expanding market. 

The UK is also leading work to improve access to EO data—advancing space data architecture and building a platform that integrates public data with commercial sources. This approach is designed to increase access to trusted EO at scale, strengthen interoperability and international harmonisation, and accelerate the development of new services and products in the UK and globally.  

UK innovation in EO

Agriculture: The UK EO community continues to engage in several exciting projects, including our pathfinder EO Data Hub, which aims to enhance the connections between satellite data providers and the information flows that support improved policy and business functions. In the agricultural sector, efforts are focused on predicting crop yields, supporting soil management and providing earlier forecasts of potential scenarios to support food security. National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO) researchers have produced high-resolution, high quality 100 m land surface temperature maps of the UK and will produce Europe-wide datasets supporting evapotranspiration studies.

Using Space Technology and EO to support Climate solutions: In our ongoing efforts to leverage space technology for climate solutions, the UK is actively involved in the development and exploitation of two significant Earth observation missions that launched in 2025: Biomass and MicroCarb. Since their first light images capturing the Amazon Basin last summer, a region that plays a crucial role in the global carbon cycle, Biomass and MicroCarb have been showcasing UK's active involvement in the development and exploitation of EO satellites designed to facilitate climate solutions. UK scientists continued their involvement during the exploitation phase and ensuring that the data returning from the missions is used to deliver tangible impact. This mission will use advanced P-band radar technology to provide new insights into forests, global climate change strategies, and conservation efforts. 

These missions not only offer free and open data for exploration by the GEO community but can enhance existing datasets related to carbon and water cycles, such as above-ground biomass, which are crucial for planning mitigation, adaptation, and early warning strategies. Additionally, research on climate change in the UK, such as heatwaves and droughts, is aimed at integrating high-quality land surface temperature data with climate model predictions and enabling the UK Health Security Agency and the Met Office to launch a heat-health alert service in the UK.     

Disaster Risk Management and Reduction: The UK continues to support international coordination on disaster risk management through sustained contributions to global Earth observation systems and services. The International Charter for Space and Major Disasters has demonstrated its enduring value, having marked 25 years of operations and more than 1,000 activations, with Charter data supporting emergency response, impact assessment, communications and longer‑term risk reduction. The UK is a member of the Disaster Charter, providing both data and emergency on call resource to support activations world-wide. The UK also contributes technical capability to Charter activations through the British Geological Survey as a Value Adder, supporting both domestic and international events, and encourages eligible national disaster management authorities to make use of the Charter’s Universal Access Programme. 

The UK’s participation in the Copernicus programme complements this effort by ensuring continued access to services such as the Copernicus Emergency Management Service, supported by new Sentinel missions and enhanced by UK commercial EO capabilities. Through the Met Office’s leading roles in the World Meteorological Organization and EUMETSAT, the UK also contributes to global initiatives such as Early Warnings for All and to next‑generation meteorological and space‑weather satellite systems, strengthening the availability of timely, reliable information to support preparedness, response and resilience worldwide.

Nature Finance: Recognising that biodiversity loss is a critical global threat, with severe implications for ecosystems, economies, and societies through the ecosystem services it provides (flood and storm protection, fertile soils for food, timber and materials, the maintenance of air and water quality, livelihoods and health), Oxford University is leading a consortium on the ESA LEON project.  This focusses on providing the best data and scientific evidence to the dialogue on nature finance: exploring and strengthening the role of EO towards leveraging financial mechanisms for environmental sustainability objectives; facilitating informed decision-making and policy formulation on biodiversity conservation; bridging data and technology gaps to integration, transfer, scalability of EO solutions relevant to biodiversity; and, enhancing and facilitating communication across the different communities engaged in nature finance dialogue and action.

UK participation and support to GEO activities

The UK Principal to GEO now sits with Geospatial in the Data Economy Directorate of Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, but the UK’s engagement with GEO spans across multiple government departments as well as academia, research and private sector entities.  The UK is actively participating in several GEO activities and acknowledge and welcome the progress made in these programmes.

The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs continues to contribute to several GEO initiatives, including those that strengthen biodiversity monitoring and food security, noting that the GEO Ecosystem Atlas supports the UK's biodiversity strategy and action plan by integrating satellite, in situ, and airborne data into woodland and habitat maps to monitor changes over time.

Supporting global biodiversity observation through GEOBON: The UK has agreed to contribute £400,000 a year for three years to GEOBON. The UK recognises the importance of GEOBON in underpinning global biodiversity policy processes, including implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework, and in promoting internationally agreed standards and best practice in biodiversity monitoring. 

Contributing to global ecosystem mapping via the GEO Global Ecosystem Atlas: The UK will continue to contribute £150,000 to the GEO Global Ecosystem Atlas as a key effort to develop a coherent, standardised picture of the world’s ecosystems. This work aligns with the UK’s own national biodiversity monitoring priorities and contributes to wider international objectives on nature.

Supporting global food security through GEOGLAM: The UK continues to recognise the important contribution of the GEO Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) initiative on global food security and has increased our contribution to £250,000. The UK remains engaged with this community and values GEOGLAM’s role within the broader GEO ecosystem. This Programme enables the UK to support our drought service to Africa using soil moisture data.  UK scientists are supporting GEOGLAM efforts to define and encourage operational Essential Agricultural Variables, working with the space agencies in CEOS.

Global Forest Observations Initiative and AIM4Forests: The UK is proud of our partnerships on international forest monitoring, including through our ongoing participation in the Global Forest Observation Initiative (GFOI), as well as our work with FAO to deliver the Accelerating Innovative Monitoring for Forests Programme (AIM4Forests). AIM4Forests focuses on leveraging technical innovation and robust data, including from EO, to support countries and communities in taking informed action to reduce deforestation and restore forests and nature, both for evidence-based policy action and for accessing climate finance. Already, we have worked with over 20 countries globally on these efforts, and launched several innovative tools, solutions and platforms on forest monitoring for REDD+, sustainable commodity supply chains and ecosystem restoration. At COP30, the UK was delighted to extend our support to AIM4Forests to 2030, now totalling £48.4m.

GEO-TREES: The UK welcomes that GEO-TREES has secured increased investment from philanthropic sources and that is now well underway in terms of data collection at a range of sites, particularly in the tropics. GEO-TREES promotes fair data policies that support and reward in-country researchers, particularly in the global south, where most tropical forest biomass is located.  The UK EO community is supportive of this initiative and is providing direct contribution to GEO-TREES, with NCEO researchers publishing one of the first GEO-TREES related open datasets of forest biomass cal/val in late 2025, hosted on the UK’s Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA). These datasets have already been accessed more than 20,000 times, from over 150 countries. The UK strongly supports the provision of open data for the widest possible use. 

UK engagement with the Committee of Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and its coordination with GEO

The UK concluded its term as Chair of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) in 2025 and was pleased to hand over leadership to our colleagues in Australia. During the UK’s Chairship, CEOS focused on maximising the impact of satellite Earth observation, with progress driven across four priority areas: improving public services through EO; supporting the use of space data in UNFCCC Global Stocktakes; advancing best practice in methane emissions measurement; and inspiring the next generation through the CEOS in Schools initiative.

The UK concluded its term as Chair of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) in 2025 and was pleased to hand over leadership to our colleagues in Australia. During the UK’s Chairship, CEOS focused on maximising the impact of satellite Earth observation, with progress driven across four priority areas: improving public services through EO; supporting the use of space data in UNFCCC Global Stocktakes; advancing best practice in methane emissions measurement; and inspiring the next generation through the CEOS in Schools initiative.

The UK continues to actively engage in CEOS at both scientific and technical levels. Under Australian and NASA leadership, CEOS has identified water monitoring and Analysis Ready Data as priority areas. These align strongly with UK scientific expertise and policy challenges, including water quality, coastal environments and clean energy, and directly complement the UK’s SCOUT mission concept.

CEOS has also approved its new Biodiversity Constellation, marking recognition of this impactful EO challenge. While the UK continues to actively support GEO’s work on biodiversity through GEOBON and the Ecosystem Atlas, we look forward to ongoing coordination across CEOS and GEO on enhancing our understanding of biodiversity challenges and the development of solutions.

The UK also welcomes the continuation of the CEOS Youth Initiative introduced through the UKSA pilot in 2025. This reflects the continued focus of GEO on youth and ensuring the skills and capabilities in EO are maintained and it is an area where coordination between GEO and CEOS could create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

UK commitment to GEO

The UK is pleased to reaffirm its support for GEO and its work programme, as evidenced through the active participation across UK government, research/academia and industry in GEO work programme activities.  The UK EO community is eager to continue to support GEO in making effective global contributions in areas like forests, heat-health, and disaster management, while also acknowledging and supporting the growing focus on biodiversity worldwide. 

The UK values GEO’s governance as the mechanism that turns shared ambition into delivery and welcomes the review of Rules of Procedure to ensure that GEO works in an open, transparent and efficient way to deliver on its mission. We are committed to playing an active role across GEO’s decision‑making and oversight structures; contributing to Plenary discussions, supporting executive and programme-level coordination, and engaging in working groups and task teams to help shape priorities and ensure impact.

EO data continues to have a huge potential to facilitate progress and inform decisions to address the global challenges we face today, providing reliable and credible data as the world tackles climate change, biodiversity loss, natural and man-made disasters. The UK is dedicated to being at the forefront of EO technology, research and collaboration, working with existing and developing new partnerships and continuing its strong relationship with EuroGEO and GEO to support our shared ambitions.