The first Living Lab with the EU Competent National Authorities (CNAs) was held successfully as a hybrid event in Brussels on 7th November 2024. The main objectives of the meeting were to provide a more in-depth overview of the ESA World AgroCommodities (WAC) project to the CNAs; review the user requirement feedback that had been collected from the interviews held with the CNAs; discuss the geographical areas for test/demo sites; present a concept for the technical approach, present additional project activities where the Consortium need CNA support. Overall 6 CNAs attended from Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Czech Republic.

The CNAs provided additional useful information that the Consortium would have to take into consideration; for example in the most recent guidance from the EU on the EUDR the species of Oil Palm and Rubber are important to be regulated. This might pose challenges for EO based mapping but the Consortium will further review the guidelines. The topic of Agroforestry systems was raised as well as it is related to small holder farmers and challenging to be observed with freely available Earth Observation (EO) data. The Workshop ended with the CNAs having an understanding on the planned consultative process required to ensure that the project provides tools that can be effectively utilized for their verification processes.