4th of December 2025, 16.00-17.00 CET
The UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in 2015, laid out a series of 17 Sustainable Development Goals that address a wide range of environmental and socio-economic challenges. However, as of 2025, only about 35% of the targets set out in the 17 SDGs are “on track or making moderate progress”. This raises concerns about how to design realistic implementation pathways, how to finance them and how to use data, including EO, in a way that truly informs decision-making.
Earth Observation can support throughout the implementation process. As a first and perhaps more obvious step, it can provide spatially explicit information for tracking progress, which is done through the SDG “indicators”. However, it can also feed dynamic decision-support models with crucial variables and data on land use change, forestry, biodiversity, water, air quality and many more, which, when integrated with socio-economic information, can help identify and design tailored implementation pathways (e.g., what actions are required – policy, financial, fiscal, knowledge, infrastructure, etc. – to obtain the desired change).
The UN will soon publish the 2027 edition of the “Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR)”, a publication aimed at strengthening the science-policy interface, which provides an overview of where we stand, what transformations are needed, and how science can better support policy and funding to achieve sustainable development. This 2027 edition, set to be released ahead of the 2027 SDG Summit, will influence how the post-2030 sustainable development framework is articulated and provides a key opportunity to recognise EO and geospatial data as credible, policy-relevant evidence.
At this important crossroads for the future of the SDGs and sustainable development more broadly, our next EOcafe will dive into how Earth Observation can support the implementation of the SDGs, until 2030 and beyond, how EO-based analyses and case studies could be used in the GSDR 2027, what information is needed for EO to be trusted in global reporting, and where concrete opportunities may emerge for the EO community.
To do so, our co-hosts Monica Miguel-Lago (Senior Project Manager, EARSC) and Tanya Walker (Market Development Officer, EARSC) will be joined by Prof. Phoebe Koundouri (Professor of Economics & Econometrics, Athens University of Economics and Business & Co-Chair of the GSDR 2027) and Dr. Marc Paganini (Technical Officer, European Space Agency), leading voices from the science–policy and Earth Observation communities.
Some questions that could be addressed during this EOcafe include:
- How is EO currently used in the monitoring of SDG indicators? And how can EO make SDG indicators more timely and more useful for decision-makers?
- What are dynamic systems models? How can they support the implementation of the SDGs? And where are EO data/insights most useful (e.g. land use, water, climate resilience, etc.)? How do these EO insights complement the socio-economic information?
- What barriers/challenges/pre-requisites are there for the use of EO in these models/pathways (e.g. data access, global commons, etc.)?
- What comes next? What is the UN GSDR? And what concrete steps should the EO community and institutional partners take so that EO evidence is visible, trusted and used in GSDR 2027 and post-2030 debates?
Registration: The webinar is open to all. Registration is free but compulsory.
Please note this is a virtual event!
EOcafe is part of a series of EARSC meetings that offer timely, relevant, and practical information on a broad variety of topics related to the EO sector. Join us every month to discuss and network while enjoying a cup of coffee with friends.
IMPORTANT NOTES!!!
- The use of a video camera is not mandatory but is encouraged to facilitate better interaction between the attendees and the guest speaker(s).
- The EOcafe will stay open after 17:00 in case our guests want to continue the discussion.
- By registering for this event, you accept the terms and conditions (https://earsc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/EARSC_Events_GDPR.pdf).
If you have any questions, and/or you want to know more about the EOcafe, and/or you want to share an idea about a future EOcafe, please contact Tanya Walker (tanya.walker@earsc.org).
