The impact of climate change has become more visible and severe. Although a worldwide phenomenon, its effect is skewed disproportionately to historically marginalised communities in the Global South. This disproportionate impact is not always visible in climate data, especially in the case of gender (Shetty). Women and children are 14 times as likely to die during a climate disaster as men, while 47.8 million more women are facing food insecurity and hunger than men (Moss and Grutter). To develop and implement climate action at local levels in collaboration with communities, it is imperative to foster sustainability, strengthen capacity, and ensure technical assistance.
We spotlight four data community-driven bottom-up data experiments across India and Southeast Asia through a series of case studies and multimedia pieces, creating avenues for documenting women’s experiences of climate change. Through a series of global multilateral convenings and building a network that advances gender-equitable climate data governance in the coming months, we aim to use these models to inform data regulatory and innovation policies in Asia.
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A feminist constructivist lens helps capture the role of women in community action in the Global South and explore pathways to establish practices of data sovereignty. Producing community-owned and embedded solutions for climate action requires reimagining climate change frameworks that recognise and affirm the autonomy of women belonging to marginalised communities.
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This is a collaboration between Aapti Institute and Data2X extending our efforts over the past three years to enable bottom-up data practices. This project unpacks the intersection of climate change, gender, and data.
Read our launch blog on examining gender-driven bottom-up data sovereignty in the age of climate data to know more.
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Updates:
Technology-driven climate action requires diverse stakeholders to come together. The documentaries on the initiatives capture the voices of on-the-ground actors and the challenges they face due to climate change. Not only as a mode that makes our research more accessible, but also as a way to help viewers better understand the need for bottom-up, data-driven climate action and the critical role women play in these initiatives.
Kerala Food Platform
amalgamates participatory data governance mechanisms with community networks, public infrastructure, and local institutions. The platform aims to strengthen market linkages for indigenous climate-resilient crops, improve agricultural planning, and strengthen financial institutions. Ensuring the platform’s benefits reach the vulnerable communities—in this case, women— and building on state and national initiatives shows opportunities for scaling and sustaining bottom-up approaches and policies for climate action. The video covers the pilot project done in the Ezhikkara region of Kerala.
Carbon Credit from Community Forests for Sustainability
A Mae Fah Luang Foundation under the Royal Patronage is enabling forest dwelling communities across Thailand to participate in T-VER, the national voluntary carbon market. Compensation towards the carbon credit is funneled directly into community forest conservation initiatives, as well as forest-based community businesses. Using land and forest data, MFLF, in collaboration with the community is able to evaluate the quality of carbon credits. In return, the communities can access data on forest fire hotspots to prevent and respond to forest fires.
Women in Water Governance
The video spotlights Open Development Initiative’s (ODI) Women in Water Governance (WIWG) Platform Project’s work in the Lower Mekong Basin countries spotlights an approach that centres the creation of granular, gendered climate data, building on the tenets of indigenous data sovereignty for natural resource management. Co-creating to develop a social innovation solution to support indigenous women in the Mekong region to share knowledge, connect with one another, learn, amplify their voices, and legitimise their knowledge related to water and river governance.
Fish Forever
An initiative through which Rare Conservation focuses on community-led action — with an emphasis on increasing women's participation — that is data-driven and creates pathways for climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. This video showcases the efforts in Southeast Sulawesi, spotlighting three initiatives: the Ourfish app, community reserve management, and the savings club. These initiatives are key to community-led action — with an emphasis on increasing women's participation.
Climate action requires a multidisciplinary approach. To understand the different perspectives, through our network convenings we brought together different stakeholders such as community tech builders, researchers, practitioners as well as community members to build consensus on the pathways to climate action.
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Network Convening I: Leveraging Data Cooperatives for Climate Action
We spotlighted existing data cooperatives through a roundtable to uncover key considerations in building equitable, data ecosystems that can build federated responses to the climate crisis. Spotlighting existing efforts and experiences.
Read our agenda here
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