The rapid changes in our environment and the emergence of big data, call for innovative solutions to support the policy frameworks and related actions toward sustainable development. To address these changes, the University of Zurich and the University of Geneva have joined forces with the UNEP/GRID — Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) to unleash the power of Big Data for monitoring the Environment with a new technology: the Swiss Data Cube (SDC). The SDC represents a new paradigm, revolutionizing the way users can interact with complex data originating from many different sources, in particular from Earth observing instruments, such as satellite imagery. In this presentation we will present the uniqueness of the SDC approach, its underlying technology as well as its broad relevance, serving a wide range of applications for environmental monitoring at the crossroads of science, policy and society to achieve agile governance for all communities.