Opportunities, Enablers and Requirements in Advancing Earth Observation for Scaling Nature Finance

Nicola Ranger, Susana Baena, Samantha Barklam , Ian Downey, Alejandro Guizar-Coutino, Marianne Haahr, Mark Jwaideh, Fiona Pedeboy, Andy Shaw, Roberto Spacey Martin, Niels Strange, Alexander Wollenweber, Gerardo Lopez Saldana, Joseph W Bull

The Leveraging Earth Observation for Nature Finance (LEON) project,  supported by the European Space Agency (ESA), seeks to transform the use of Earth Observation (EO) data in enabling, 
mobilising and scaling nature-positive finance globally. This report builds upon six months of structured research, landscape analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement to map the opportunities and requirements for EO data within financial decision-making. It establishes the  conceptual and operational foundation for the LEON project and its six thematic pilots. The findings of this baseline analysis suggest that EO could become foundational infrastructure for nature finance, enabling financial markets to integrate environmental intelligence into economic decision-making. Realising this potential will require several enabling steps: development of standardised EO-derived environmental indicators aligned with disclosure frameworks; improved asset-level geolocation data linking companies, projects and ecosystems; integration of EO datasets into financial analytics platforms and risk management tools; strengthened interoperability with sustainability reporting standards and taxonomies; and, expanded capacity building across 
financial institutions, regulators and data providers. If these challenges can be addressed, EO 
technologies have the potential to play a central role in enabling the transparency, accountability and scalability required to mobilise nature-positive finance globally.