Open-Access Satellite Data Are Not Truly Open: A Critical Review of the Last-Mile Problem in Least Developed Countries—Lessons from Nepal for the Remote Sensing Community

Open-access satellite data from major Earth observation (EO) missions, including Landsat, Sentinel, and MODIS, have transformed environmental monitoring globally, yet in most least developed countries (LDCs) this data abundance has not translated into operational decisions or policy impact. This review argues that the dominant narrative in the remote sensing community, that open data leads to democratized impact, is fundamentally incomplete. Using Nepal as an illustrative case study, we demonstrate that legal openness alone is insufficient without parallel advances in technical usability and institutional accessibility, the two layers of EO accessibility that the community has largely overlooked. Through a cross-sectoral synthesis spanning forests, agriculture, disaster management, and land cover monitoring, we identify a persistent “last-mile problem”: the systematic gap between data availability and operational governance integration. Systemic barriers including limited internet infrastructure, skills gaps compounded by brain drain, fragmented institutional mandates, and the absence of a national EO coordination mechanism collectively prevent technically sound EO outputs from informing routine planning and policy decisions. Nepal’s small geographic extent, growing digital literacy, and ongoing governance reforms create strategic opportunities for transition, but realizing these requires a functioning geospatial ecosystem integrating data systems, technical infrastructure, human capital, and institutional frameworks. We propose the “Pixels to Policy” framework to operationalize this ecosystem and identify three priority research directions for the global remote sensing community: lightweight data formats for low-bandwidth settings, capacity-aware tool design, and implementation science for EO uptake. These directions reframe the community’s responsibility from delivering open data to ensuring it can be used.