Some of the world?s most respected leaders in sustainable development are confirmed to be speaking at the second Eye on Earth Summit, taking place from 6th to 8th October in Abu Dhabi.

The summit will explore the critical need for better access to and sharing of environmental, social and economic data to support informed decision-making for sustainable development.

With the post-2015 development agenda firmly positioning sustainability at the fore of global priorities this year and beyond, Eye on Earth Summit 2015 will cast a spotlight on the role governments, technology, the scientific community and citizen participation play in enhancing access to quality data about the state of the world?s resources. Close to 30 sessions will be delivered by more than 100 speakers across the three-day summit. Speakers will explore the supply and demand dynamics, enabling conditions, and crucial role of data and information in creating a healthier planet, according to UAE News Agency (WAM).

2015 will mark a turning point for sustainable development, poverty eradication and the protection of the planet with the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs, and a new global climate change agreement likely to be enacted by the end of the year.

"The events of 2015 make the work of Eye on Earth more important than ever as we come together, governments, the private sector, academia and civil society, to improve information availability and quality to safeguard the future of the planet and humanity. At Summit 2015, we hope to agree the roadmap that will get us there," said Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak, Secretary-General, Environment Agency – Abu Dhabi, a founding Eye on Earth Alliance Partner.

The Eye on Earth Summit will open with a focus on policy maker demand for environmental-related data and the associated challenges in using it to make evidence-based decisions. Led by Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, and Under-Secretary General of the UN, issues such as inconsistent data sharing mechanisms across countries and regions, institutional attitudes to open-source data policies and responding to commercial imperatives from the private sector, are some of the topics that will be discussed. The need for data to address the Syrian refugee crisis will be another critical agenda item.

Felix Dodds, Senior Fellow at the Global Research Institute of the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute Jonathan Kent Deal, CEO of Treasure Karoo Action Group and winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize, considered the green equivalent of the Nobel prize and Dr. Fernando R. Echavarria from the U.S. Department of State?s Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science (OES), will be among the esteemed guest speakers discussing these issues.

Barbara Ryan, Secretariat Director of the Group on Earth Observations will open day two of the summit, looking at the problems impeding the availability of and access to environmental-related data. She will be joined by Muki Haklay, Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London and director of its Extreme Citizen Science group Louis Liebenberg, Executive Director of CyberTracker Conservation NPC and an Associate of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Ed Parsons, the Geospatial Technologist of Google responsible for evangelising Google?s mission to organise the world?s information using geography, WAM reported.