What
The Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP) leverages the spirit of collaboration to create multi-sector strategies that strengthen the role of data in environmental and climate governance.
Through pilots, workshops, research, and narrative building, OEDP works to [re]build trust between communities, government, civil society, and science. OEDP articulates improved processes within current environmental governance, while also envisioning generative environmental futures -- leading to the goal of healthier communities, robust natural systems, and collective action paired with matching policy levers.
Why
While environmental and climate data proliferate, the ability to access and use this data does not. OEDP envisions a future where environmental and climate data have a more significant role in collaborative and participatory systems that help us better manage and protect our environmental health. The crises of our time require data and information representative of our diverse ways of knowing, and this is what generates informed and grounded solutions that work for and with people.
How
OEDP forges innovation spaces through four core activities:
Pilots: We collaborate with institutions, nonprofits, individuals and universities to deepen understanding of best practices for new collaborative models in the environmental context.
Workshops: We (co-)host and facilitate events and collaborative spaces where we can articulate and catalyze interdisciplinary solutions.
Research: We provide insights that identify and clarify environmentally generative actions and policies through administrative, political, scientific, legal, economic, and cultural levers.
Narrative Building: We articulate strengthened roles for environmental and climate data through multimedia collaborations.
To learn more about current projects and bodies of work, please visit our Initiatives page.
The means and methods to collect environmental data and information have never been greater. However, the accessibility and usability of data require dedicated attention in order to create an environmental governance landscape where the value of different types and places of data and information input is recognized. The burden of proof to demonstrate harm because of pollution has historically landed on the shoulders of impacted communities. While data and monitoring have proliferated as part of the solution, without explicit attention on the infrastructure – social, technical, political – that environmental decision-making relies on, community monitoring and open data from government and academic researchers, are complicated to put to use.
Conceptualized in 2019, the Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP) aims to address this critical point in the lifecycle of environmental governance and decision making. In 2020, with support from the Shuttleworth Foundation, OEDP launched with a focus on working across sectors to envision and work towards stronger, collaborative environmental governance practices.
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