Open EO data provides access to scientific data beyond the specialised scientific community, enabling decision makers around the world to better understand the issues they face, in order to shape more effective policies.

Efficient decision-making needs a strong evidence base to account for it. EO data can be combined with other geo-referenced socio-demographic, public administration data to make indicators and analysis more defined and targeted. For example, satellite and in-situ data on air pollution can also draw on demographic data to provide information on population exposure to air pollution. And with this information, pollution mitigation efforts can be focused on areas where exposure is highest.

Monitoring trends, such as concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), is also very important, in order to verify that policies implemented to control emissions to the atmosphere are effective.

Open data is vital for international agreements such as the Paris Agreement - an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016, and the Kyoto Protocol - which commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO₂ emissions are driving it.

These two agreements are overseen at the annually occurring United Nations Climate Change Conferences (Conference of the Parties, COP). Where EO data plays a very important role to update how well each country, as well as the globe as a whole, is doing in reducing emissions.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations intergovernmental body tasked with advancing knowledge on human-caused climate change. The IPCC conducts a systematic review of all relevant published literature on climate change on a regular basis, and thousands of scientists and other experts volunteer to review the data and compile key findings into "Assessment Reports" for policymakers and the general public. Its Fifth Assessment Report, released in 2015, heavily informed the Paris Agreement.

Open data portals include ESA's Earth Online: Earth Observation information discovery platform and the Copernicus Open Access Hub

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