ESA’s Global Development Assistance (GDA) Forest Management activity supports the integration of satellite Earth Observation (EO) into the forest sector programmes of International Financial Institutions (IFIs). Designed and implemented by a European consortium led by GAF AG and funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), the activity seeks to enhance transparency, efficiency, and sustainability in forest management through the development of agile, user-informed EO services. This is a strategically important sector for IFIs — the World Bank alone manages an active forest and landscapes portfolio of over US$10.8 billion — reflecting its role in climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and rural livelihoods.
Since the launch of the GDA Forest Management activity in September 2024, the consortium has engaged with the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) teams, in order to identify their operational challenges and ensure that EO could support these needs. These discussions have informed the technical and strategic direction of the first development cycle of Case Studies. Prioritising user needs is essential to ensure that the EO services developed are relevant, usable, and capable of supporting sustainable forest management at scale.
Opportunities for EO support to forestry operations were explored through early user engagement
The GDA Forest consortium has been engaging with IFI project teams across several countries. The objective is to explore challenges related to forest degradation, restoration, and traceability, and to assess how EO could address information gaps and support monitoring.
So far, discussions have been held across 11 priority IFI programmes. Countries included Bangladesh, the Congo Basin, Fiji, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mexico, South Sudan, and Uganda. While contexts varied, common needs emerged:
- Tracking forest cover and regeneration trends over multi-year periods (e.g. Laos, Bangladesh, South Sudan, Kenya)
- Monitoring the success of natural and planted mangrove regrowth areas for carbon stock assessments (e.g. Bangladesh)
- Supporting EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) compliance with land use and traceability monitoring (e.g. Uganda)
- Validating EO outputs with national forest inventory datasets to support reporting or scale-up (e.g. Mexico)
In each case, the goal is to identify EO solutions that could be tested and refined through an agile development process, ensuring they align with existing workflows and decision-making contexts.
Early user engagement guides EO product development and aligns services with IFI expectations
The user engagement calls have been helping define both the technical characteristics and practical constraints of future EO products. They also created space for open dialogue on:
- Preferred spatial and temporal resolution
- Data availability and validation requirements
- Integration opportunities with national forest information systems or existing platforms
Requests to monitor mangrove ecosystems and assess post-planting survival rates in Bangladesh are being addressed through the combined use of radar and optical satellite imagery. In Kyrgyzstan, teams raised the need to identify natural forest regeneration in areas under grazing pressure. In Uganda, EO was seen as a potential tool to verify deforestation-free supply chains for export crops such as coffee.
In several cases, EO products were already in use but limited in scale or accessibility. IFI teams highlighted the need for clearer guidance, improved documentation, and data formats suited to local systems.
User engagement is central to the GDA Forest Management activity development process
These engagements represent the first step in the agile development cycles. By consulting IFIs and Client States early, the GDA Forest Management activity ensures that product development is anchored in specific operational needs, complementary to existing data systems and focused on usability, scalability, and potential for long-term adoption within IFI programmes and local forest management activities.
In addition to informing technical scoping, the engagement process helps define areas of interest (AoIs) for demonstration, validation strategies, and key contacts for follow-up.
The user engagement phase has not finished yet, however, the GDA Forest Management consortium is already designing the first iteration of EO deliverables in support of the identified priority projects.
