(re)Taking Control Of Data For Climate Action? Building Community-Driven Data Collaborations for Climate Justice and Resilience

​As climate impacts intensify, frontline communities—from coastal towns facing sea-level rise to neighborhoods battling urban heat—are generating data about risks, solutions, and lived realities. Yet too often, this knowledge is locked away, fragmented, or extracted without consent and accountability.

​This conversation asks: What would it look like if communities owned, governed, and shared their climate and adaptation data on their own terms?

​I am developing a Community-Driven Data Collaboration Toolkit with the Obama Leaders Network to support local leaders and organizations in setting up fair, transparent, and impactful data partnerships. The toolkit offers templates for: community data agreements that protect community sovereignty, collaboration workflows that balance power across partners, stewardship models that make climate data actionable for resilience planning.

​Through a participatory dialogue, we will: Surface challenges you’ve faced around climate data (access, trust, equity). Explore examples of “good” vs. “bad” data collaborations. Co-imagine principles for community-driven data governance that could inform the Toolkit.

​Why join? If you’re from a city, NGO, research institute, or community group, you’ve likely struggled with questions of trust, access, and power in climate data. Help shape a resource that communities worldwide can use to negotiate fairer and more effective collaborations, while defending digital rights.