Redesigning Earth Observation as a Digital Public Good

About the Session Our ability to respond to climate change increasingly depends on our ability to see what is happening. Satellite imagery, Earth observation, emissions monitoring, forecasts, land-use data, disease surveillance, and other forms of climate intelligence can tell us where forests are disappearing, where fires are spreading, where emissions are occurring, and where climate risks are beginning to affect people and ecosystems. But the infrastructure behind that intelligence raises a growing question: who controls it? Governments, UN agencies, NGOs, researchers, and communities increasingly depend on commercial satellite infrastructure and data platforms for information that is becoming essential to public decision-making. Access can be expensive, restricted, technically difficult, or subject to terms established by private providers. As geopolitical tensions grow and multilateral systems weaken, dependence on a small number of providers is becoming a governance and resilience issue, not simply a technical one. For governments and communities in the Global South, it also raises questions about whether climate intelligence can be accessed and used on their own terms. Access alone, however, does not create action. There is also a climate-to-decision gap. A satellite may detect forest loss. A forecast may show rising disease risk. Carbon accounting may identify emissions. But that information only matters if a land manager, municipality, health system, or government agency has the capacity, authority, resources, and systems to do something differently because of it. This session will explore climate intelligence as public infrastructure, from the systems that observe the planet to the institutions making decisions on the ground. How can we reduce dependence on closed commercial systems? What climate information should be treated as a public good? How do we make data trustworthy and accessible? And who funds the often-overlooked connection layer, including interoperable systems, local analytical capacity, decision protocols, and maintenance, that turns global intelligence into local action? Discussion Group Leaders Bill Greer is Co-Founder at Common Space, expanding equitable access to high-resolution Earth observation data for disaster responders, scientists, journalists, and frontline communities. What to Expect A conversation that moves from satellites in orbit to decisions on the ground. Participants will explore how Earth observation and climate data support forest protection, emissions accounting, fire management, public health, adaptation, and other forms of climate action, while examining who owns and controls the infrastructure underneath them. The discussion will connect governments, communities, multilateral institutions, climate and health practitioners, funders, researchers, and technology providers around a shared question: what would it take to make critical climate intelligence more open, resilient, trusted, and genuinely usable by the people responsible for acting on it? Who This Is For This session is for governments, Earth observation and satellite organizations, climate and conservation practitioners, multilateral institutions, funders, public health leaders, researchers, data and technology organizations, community organizations, and others working to turn climate and environmental information into decisions. What You Will Get Out of It A clearer understanding of the infrastructure behind global climate intelligence and who controls it Perspectives on reducing dependence on commercial satellite imagery and closed data platforms Approaches to making climate and Earth observation data more accessible to Global South governments and communities Lessons for closing the gap between climate information and local public-sector decisions Ideas for financing the data integration, analytical capacity, and institutional infrastructure required to turn intelligence into action