ESA-World Bank Partnership: Policy, Planning and Impact

The World Bank, headquartered in Washington, DC, is one of the world’s largest providers of development assistance. Through loans and grants, it provides financial assistance to projects, primarily in low and middle-income countries. Policy advice, research, analysis, and technical assistance are all part of this.

For more than a decade, the European Space Agency (ESA) has collaborated on a variety of projects and initiatives with the World Bank. This collaboration began in 2008, when ESA conducted small-scale pilot projects demonstrating the potential of Earth Observation for the Bank’s operations, leading to the creation of the ‘eoworld’ joint initiative in 2011.

In 2015, the World Bank and the European Space Agency signed a new partnership agreement to take this collaboration to a more strategic level, and the new initiative that resulted was known as ‘Earth Observation for Sustainable Development’, or EO4SD. ESA’s EO4SD has enabled tangible outcomes and measurable impact from the use of Earth Observation data in many areas of development.

Most recently, “Space for International Development Assistance” is a cooperation agreement powered by Global Development Assistance (GDA). It was launched by ESA, the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, and includes two distinct programme components. One, on the ESA side, is called Global Development Assistance (GDA), and it will focus on knowledge development and new technical developments in direct response to requirements gathered within the Banks as well as from clients and developing countries. The second component focuses on associated capacity building and skills transfer to developing countries in order to foster and sustain the local digital economy in the long term. It leverages different development finance and programmatic instruments including the new dedicated World Bank Digital Earth Partnership programme and associated Trust Fund.