THE ESA REMOTE SENSING PROGRAMME 
PRESENT ACTIVITIES AND FUTURE PLANS 
J. Plevin and I. Pryke 
European Space Agency (ESA) 
1. INTRODUCTION 
In recent years mankind's demands for resources has 
increased rapidly, indeed to the point where in critical 
areas we can anticipate demand exceeding availability. In 
addition to the dangers of a resource limited world, the 
present excessive consumption in developed regions often has 
a detrimental impact on the environment that can be felt 
throughout the world. This is inherently an unstable situa- 
tion, and also an unfair situation for the many cases today 
where the availability and utilisation of resources is un- 
evenly distributed. The imbalances of today are, however, 
minor compared to the problems we are likely to face in the 
near future unless positive action is taken to understand 
what resources are available, how they are being managed, 
and to establish a durable balance between resources con- 
sumption and availability and environment. 
To achieve a lasting balance it is necessary to improve 
our understanding of the dynamic interactions between man and 
his use of resources and the impact of this use on the earth's 
environment; we are presently far from reaching this under- 
standing. For progress to be made, accurate and timely sources 
of information are required that can feed into the resources 
and environmental models presently under development. A key 
difficulty that must be overcome is that the situation under 
study often changes more rapidly than can be followed by the 
information sources that are set up to describe it. New 
information sources are certainly needed, and the newly avail- 
able remote sensing techniques are attracting increasing 
attention, in particular spaceborne remote sensing methods 
because of their potential ability to provide accurate, timely 
and repetitive information over large areas. 
The promise and potential importance of these satellite 
techniques are so great that Europe cannot afford to play a 
passive role in their exploitation, not simply because they 
are relevant to her own needs but also because of their 
Importance to the developing world and to global problems of 
the oceans and environment.