The development of the GEO FCT task is being led by governments with a strong interest in forest carbon monitoring: Australia, Canada, Japan and Norway. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are two other lead partners, while institutions in GEO member countries, Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) and the EC Joint Research Centre play important roles.

CEOS has committed resources from the world’s space agencies to provide a coordinated contribution to the task with the European Space Agency (ESA) ensuring the coordination of CEOS inputs to the task. National space agencies engaged to date are Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Japan and the USA. Seven governments have agreed to cooperate as ‘National Demonstrators’ for the project in 2009-2010. They are Australia, Brazil, Cameroon, Guyana, Indonesia, Mexico and Tanzania.