Earth Observation for Environmental, Social, and Governance Schemes

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This report is a topical overview analysis carried out by the M&E activity, under the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Global Development Assistance (GDA) programme—a global partnership to mainstream the use of Earth Observation (EO) into development operations, implemented in cooperation with major International Financial Institutions (IFIs).

This report draws insights from the WBG and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) publication, “Geospatial ESG”, including the definition of EO/geospatial ESG, “the use of geospatial data [including EO] to generate ESG relevant insights into a specific commercial asset, company, portfolio or geographic area”. We recognise that geospatial data, the term used in the WWF report, refers to a combination of data beyond solely that derived from EO satellites. Instead, this report will focus on the value that data derived from EO satellites brings to ESG. Satellite-enabled data can provide additional insights into all three of the ESG pillars, but is particularly valuable in understanding environmental factors, and hence this will be the area this report focuses mainly on.