LEON
The LEON project is a multinational effort led by the University of Oxford and Assimila, working with early adopters from the global finance community to turn satellite Earth Observation (EO) data into actionable insights for nature finance.
Its goal is to help governments, investors, and policymakers make better decisions for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem protection, and sustainable finance, at a time when global agreements like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework make these challenges urgent. LEON focuses on using EO data to strengthen financial mechanisms, fill gaps in technology and data integration, and improve communication between the science, policy, and finance communities.
LEON aims to turn satellite data into practical information that helps governments and financial institutions understand how investments affect nature and direct capital toward protecting it. In order to provide robust biodiversity metrics, the project and its partners have launched six pilots across sectors like mining, agriculture and supply chains, biodiversity credits and natural capital accounting, showing how environmental impacts can be tracked and used.
Make nature finance visible:
Turning satellite data into evidence of how investments impact ecosystems helps bring crucial information that decision-makers usually lack.
Prevent greenwashing:
By measuring whether nature-positive finance tools like biodiversity credits or nature-linked bonds are delivering results.
Support better policy:
Governments, banks and investors now have a practical way to track nature loss and protection consistently over time and at scale.
Vizzuality added value to the LEON platform by transforming a technical project into a highly accessible and visually engaging experience. The work involved designing a consistent brand identity, and building an intuitive website that could communicate sophisticated Earth Observation and nature finance concepts to diverse audiences. Vizzuality also directly explored the capacity for LEON’s pilot datasets to scale impact across the economy.
