Spaceborne environmental detection lidar, acquiring vertical profiles of environmental information at both day and night, has become an important remote sensing technology for several countries. After nearly 30 years of development, this technology has obtained a large amount of global surface information and atmospheric oceanic environmental information, which has made a great contribution to the rational utilization of earth resources and dealing with global ecological environment and climate problems. In this paper, the development history of spaceborne environmental detection lidar is summarized. The key technologies including the space-borne lidar simulator, satellite-ground validation, and data processing and application are emphasized. The future development directions of spaceborne environmental detection lidar are discussed. The background knowledge of spaceborne environmental detection lidar and its key technologies are introduced to help researchers understand how spaceborne environmental detection lidar provides key data for earth system detection, so that the data accuracy can be better guaranteed and lidar data can be more applied into earth science studies.