Ecometrica Manager wins BusinessGreen Leaders Award

Edinburgh, 11 July 2019 - Sarah Middlemiss, space programme manager at the downstream space information company Ecometrica, has been named Young Sustainability Executive of the Year in the BusinessGreen Leaders Awards 2019.

Middlemiss scooped the award for her work on the Forests 2020 Project, which she has led as part of Ecometrica’s guiding role in the UK Space Agency’s global drive to monitor and tackle deforestation using data derived from space observation satellites.

Awarding the gong BusinessGreen, ‘the UK's leading source of information for the green economy’, said: "There were many inspiring entries in this category, but there could only be one winner and in the end Sarah Middlemiss won over the judges thanks to her critical role in leading the Forests 2020 initiative, bringing together international partners, multi-million pound budgets, and cutting edge space technologies to help protect the world's tropical forests."

Middlemiss has been at the forefront of Forests 2020 for Ecometrica since the very start of the company’s involvement. With the project due to complete next year, she said that she is proud of what has been achieved.

“The purpose of Forests 2020 is to improve forest monitoring across six different countries and help to effectively direct efforts to reduce deforestation,” she said. “There is increasing demand of both governments and companies to more closely monitor the state of forests. We have had some very positive impacts, including making progress in reducing deforestation caused by cocoa production in Ghana, mainstreaming automated satellite monitoring systems in Indonesia, and supporting monitoring of supply chains in the Cerrado region of Brazil.

“We have been able to effect positive change through Forests 2020 and hopefully the groundwork we have laid will help reduce deforestation for years to come.”