Good Governance for Climate Data
We are working to ensure open, participative governance for vital climate information
The GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung) has commissioned Democratic Society and Gov Lab to develop research and recommendations on options for shared data solutions governance for climate.
Why it matters
The use of traditional and new types of environmental data will be crucial in the fight against climate change, as well as other related threats. Data are essential to understand the scale of the challenge, enabling to measure and forecast the effects of global warming, and societies to become more resilient and prepared. The good use of all these data has enormous social benefits, but each of them brings governance challenges - privacy, secrecy, business monopolies, anti-fraud and transparency among them.
To achieve the benefits we need data use to be supported by a solid governance regime that can steer collection, access, and use of environmental data. Environmental data is an expansive and loosely defined field, and while no one-size-fits-all approach will suffice, an effective environmental data governance framework will provide a foundation for decision-makers to adopt, customize and refine for their particular contexts.
The scope of the work
This initiative has the ambition to improve the flow of environment-related data through international value chains. Impact investors, corporations, policy makers, and consumers need a shared data solution to take better informed decisions, to comply with environmental standards and policies and to reach internationally agreed climate and biodiversity goals.
Several initiatives are working on shared data solutions to facilitate generation and access to the data demanded. Some of these initiatives are corporate-led, some by international organisations and some by public sector organisations, each with different scope of data content. We seek to map existing initiatives, the main problems and opportunities for a data governance structure that could benefit the public good.
Read our report
The full report can be read online here A blog by Data & Policy (Cambridge University) was also released