SCO at LPS 2025: from data to climate action

At the crossroads of data, innovation and the climate emergency, LPS 2025 was a week of exciting exchanges between scientists, space agencies, companies and institutions, at the heart of a booming European ecosystem.

Roundtable: turning data into action

💬 Representatives from agencies, national networks, the private sector and research, all illustrated the richness of their different approaches. ESA called for better coordination of its major programs with international initiatives to ensure coordinated action on a large scale. Space4Climate (UK) acts as a national platform connecting researchers, decision-makers and businesses to integrate data into climate policies. For its part, NOSA (Norway) has highlighted the importance of innovative scientific mediation through the actions carried out by SCO, in particular with immersive tools to raise awareness among the general public. For its part, the French company Acri-ST emphasized the importance of relying on solid public-private partnerships to transform satellite data into concrete services for the field. Finally, offering a historical and critical perspective on Earth observation in the service of European environmental policies, social scientist Dorian Groll saw the SCO as a flexible network linking science and politics in a shared vision of climate regulation.

👉  The discussions highlighted a central issue for any data-driven climate policy: how to bridge the gap between science and practice?

🔗 Climate Action Interfaces: essential levers for action

As F. Bretar pointed out in his introduction, it is not enough to have quality data - however valuable it may be: it must be made accessible, understandable and exploitable by decision-makers, land managers, businesses and all those who take action in the field.

For this reason, and this is one of its special features, the SCO delivers interfaces with a language and visualization familiar to users. This "intelligible" restitution is the hinge for the transition to action, ensuring translation and connection between the often-compartmentalized worlds of research, public action and technological development. The SCO thus appears to be an effective catalyst, because it is in these spaces of dialogue and co-construction that the most robust, shared and useful solutions are born.

🎯 With a strong consensus, the round table concluded on the need to continue investing in these interface structures, at all levels - local, national, international - so that spatial data become genuine levers for adaptation to climate change.

🇰🇪 Kenya joins the SCO: a new African dynamic

A powerful and symbolic moment, Kenya, represented by the Kenya Space Agency KSA, seized the opportunity of the LPS to sign the SCO Charter and become the 30th country to join the initiative. Kenya's entry confirms the structuring role of SCO in Africa, where several cooperations are underway, and where the issue of reliable and equitable access to environmental data is more strategic than ever.

"It is a great honor for Kenya to join the Space for Climate Observatory. We are convinced that this initiative will enable us to strengthen our capacity to use satellite data to address climate challenges in our territory, while developing synergies with other committed partners." Brigadier Hillary B Kipkosgey, Director General, Kenya Space Agency

Technical workshop with the Kenyan Space Agency to deepen cooperation

On Thursday, a technical workshop provided an opportunity to extend the exchanges, by going into detail about the projects, their methodology, and above all the prospects for cooperation. A privileged opportunity to share experiences, dialogue between partners and network. These rich discussions will help to anchor the projects more firmly in their local areas, while nourishing the SCO's international momentum.

15th Steering Committee

Held on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, the 15th Steering Committee brought together 35 participants, 20 of them in person, and was introduced by Susanne Mecklenburg of the European Space Agency (ESA), as host organization.

After the introduction of two new members - the Monaco Space Office (MSO) and the Kenya Space Agency (KSA) - the General Secretariat presented recent progress on the 2023-2025 work program.

Referring to the call for projects currently that will open on 1st September 2025, two projects showed concrete examples of SCO certification: Era-Explorer, an application that lets you explores over 85 years of climate reanalysis data and produces climatological averages, and EWSHR , an interactive website generating maps and an early warning service for air pollution incidents.

The SCO is also maintaining an active presence on the international scene, with forthcoming participation at EuroGEO workshop 25, COP30 and IAF GLOC 2026.

Review

Through its various presentations and demonstrations, the SCO confirms during this LPS its unique status as a bridge-builder between players, disciplines and scales, in order to accelerate the adaptation of all territories to climate change.

🙏 Many thanks to all those who make this ambition a reality!