At this year’s ESA Living Planet Symposium, ESA’s Global Development Assistance (GDA) programme will host an Agora session (B.01.01) focused on a growing area of cooperation: using Earth Observation (EO) to support international development finance. The session, Amplifying impact through EO integration in international development finance mechanisms, will explore how satellite data is being used by major international financial institutions (IFI’s) to plan, implement and monitor development and climate projects.
For more than 15 years, ESA has worked with IFI’s such as the World Bank, ADB, EBRD, IDB and IFAD to bring EO into the heart of development operations. These partnerships, strengthened under ESA’s GDA programme, are based on long-term cooperation, joint planning, and a shared commitment to improving impact through better data.
The session opens with remarks from Susanne Mecklenburg and Christoph Aubrecht (ESA), who will also moderate a panel featuring: Renaud Seligmann (World Bank), Eric Quincieu (ADB), Rafael Anta (IDB), Fani Kallianou de Jong (EBRD), and Gladys Morales (IFAD). Each speaker will share examples of how their institution is using EO in its work, whether that’s building capacity in client countries, scaling up private sector engagement, or leveraging EO for co-financing through climate funds.
While the focus is on what’s working, the session will also reflect on what’s still needed. How can we make EO services easier to access and use? What are the main barriers to scaling adoption at the country level? And how can EO contribute to building local digital economies? These are some of the questions the session will aim to address, with the goal of helping partners move from successful pilots to sustainable, system-wide integration.
Join this LPS25 session on Tuesday 24 June, from 13:00 to 13:45, at the Nexus Agora.
