# Climate Commons Project

## Data Empowerment Fund

Form: https://o94v7kxisvc.typeform.com/to/ZU3Eeat8

**[Link to Clean Google Doc for Data Empowerment Fund](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rvni-xjMihLXxRxuy_rIYvF5hjW_TK6vonL2JttDQ6E/edit)**

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#### Hello, what's the name of your initiative?

- "A Climate Data Literacy Commons"
> [name=Matt Price]

#### In what country will your initiative have impact?

- Canada

#### Who is your primary contact?

- Matt Price

#### Describe the problem you are working to solve, or your diagnosis of the status quo and why it must change.

Though data relevant to climate change and environmental degradataion is abundant, yet it still can be difficult for to access, interpret, and deploy, particularly for non-'experts'. This difficulty limits collective action to mitigate environmental harms or identify opportunities to respond to the climate crisis, especially when it is initiated by young people or at a local level in their communities. This lack of an appropriate infrastructure for individual interpretation is what our project seeks to address, by prototyping an open approach to building climate data literacy.

> A smaller one?
> [name=DW]

Though data relevant to climate change an environmental degradataion is abundant, it is difficult for local decisionmakers to access, interpret, and deploy. Citizen groups, civil servants, and local elected officials are often keenly aware of these deficiencies, but a lack of appropriate information infrastructure makes it difficult even to identify starting points for local solutions. This requires a socio-technical solution: technical infrastructure embedded in sustainable practice.

> This version of the problem statement seems too big?
> [name=MP]

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- Lots of climate data and data products at a national level
- Also provincial level or sectoral data, indicators, and reporting
- Lots of data that isn't exactly readily available: whether because locked into old formats (digitized PDFs) or dbs with unfriendly interfaces, not shared for percieved business advantage or proprietary info
- Data needed to answer many types of transitions and climate data relevant at the community and smaller-scale level (these people less interested in things like nation-level energy data)
- > can we come up with say 3-5 actual decision types people might need to make?
> eg: local endangered species decisions (fishing eg) -- this is "local" but usually governed by national bodies; transit costing (susually provincial funding);
- Difficulty engaging with climate data we do have (lots of data, tooling, literacy)

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Some of the types of decisions:
- tree cover / shade / heatzones in a neighbourhood
- how wildfire management happens
- kelp farming opportunities that respect Indigenous soveriegnty in coastal BC
- identifying land use opportunities (?)

#### Describe how your initiative is designed to address this problem or bring about this change.

Please make this short and sweet. We will ask for information about specific activities, outputs and outcomes in a moment.

This pilot project establishes a model for community-led data stewardship and analysis. In partnership with youth climate organizers, we will:
1. identify local problem areas where existing datasets have the greatest likelihood of facilitating collective action
2. work collaboratively to build leaders' data analysis skills
3. develop playbooks and curricula that are openly licensed and distributed for a broader public

one more sentence about how great this is.

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Partnering with a youth-led organization model
Frame this as a pilot / poc, repository to allow anyone else to get this out and runnings
+ report

> I'm trying to figure out a way to achieve this in 12 months at a finite scale. I think it would be stronger if we actually had a community partner to work with. Like: Is there a set of climate decisions _in a place_ that we could somehow intervene to improve?
> At Ajah, we have [this somewhat interesting model in Peterborough](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1atAScdNrbXXCawSBgqzzwPTJqL6c5c95pVk1dLIvIFk/edit#heading=h.md6jejq7fvfk). We facilitated a community data collection effort around the main homeless encampment in the city. It's cool but it was hard work, and sort of slogging work, bringing people together who had a certain history of disagreement.
> The challenges of data collection are different from data consumption, so maybe "build a commons" would be easier. But the disadvantage of working without a clear idea of what is needed, is, we success is just generally less likely.
> so anyway, we have this projecti n our toolbox. We could
> a. try to build on these partnerships directly. I don't see why that would work, they know nothing about climate
> b. stay in Peterborough, see if the municipal gov't ocnnections are solid enough to give us access to the relevant actors
> c. learn from our experience in peterborough & try working in another place.
> d. not fixate on a geographical location the way I'm doing here.

> Also, I think you or someone showed me [this tool](https://citycatalyst.openearth.org/) 2 weeks ago, and I talked to their head of tech on Monday. It was interesting & we are hoping to find way to talk to them

Flood apprentices: an exercise in making things public
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2011.602540

- Playbook built off commonly-accepted open source data tools and accompanying workshops working with local youth climate organization to model that there are ways to bridge these gaps above and have youth lead in answering questions with data and reframing what questions we ask about climate that leverage data.

#### Tell us about the composition, experience and diversity of your team.
Also list any other organisations who would be involved in your initiative, such as delivery partners or advisors.

The two principals, Dawn Walker and Matt Price, are PhD social scientists with a deep understanding of socio-technical systems, as well as experienced participants in movements for social transformation. They also bring diverse experience developing open curriculum on technical topics in diverse pediagogical environments, from primary schools to bicycle workshops, and from university campuses to remote Himalayan villages.

[Ajah](ajah.ca) is a social enterprise with offices in Montreal and Houston, Texas, focused on data and technology in the social sector. We applies our unique combination of expertise—in technology, governance, and the nonprofit sector—to solve systemic problems, build long-term solutions, and develop sustainable governance frameworks.

We have identified potential infrastructure partners, including [212c](https://2i2c.org), [Radiant Earth](https://radiant.earth), and [earthmovers](https://earthmovers.io) and initiated preliminary conversations. We also have identified Canadian youth-led climate organizations to partner with, including [the British Columbia Youth Climate Corps](https://www.youthclimatecorps.com/).

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Katimavik vibes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katimavik

#### Describe the maturity of your initiative.
Tell us how long it’s been running, if you have participants involved already and any impact it has achieved to date (if any).

This is a pilot project rooted in the principals prior experience. We intend this pilot to serve as a model and seed for much broader forms of youth engagement with climate data, and we will rely on our experience solving strategic organizational problems to identify strategic opportuinties for expansion.

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- Brand new initiative (< 3 months)
- Hosting intial meeting at Civic Tech Toronto Meetups

> this is where tying back to peterborough would be nice -- we could claim a history of success at... something.
> or alternatively if we were working w/ 2i2c or someone, we oculd claim history there.

#### What value of grant are you seeking from the Data Empowerment Fund?

- $100,000

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> I think we should apply at the 100k level [name=MP]

100,000

$15 k infra
$35 k community partner
$50 k direct contract (or thru ajah)

#### Describe what activities you would use the grant to undertake.

We expect to complete the following activities during the pilot project:
- Identify youth leaders
- Collaboratively determine problem areas & datasets
- Develop curriculum, data playbook & set up infrastructure
- Deliver initial workshop series
- Replication of workshops on at least one university campus across Canada

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[these aren't really eactivities, they're justification for the amount]
- Stipends to people participating in workshopping / feedback sessions while developing playbook + workshop model
- Paid staff

#### Describe what outputs you would use the grant to produce.
These are the things your activities will produce.

All materials from the grant will be released publicly under open licenses including Creative Commons. We anticipate the followng outputs from the grant:
- Repositories with code and configuration details for a hosted JupyterLab environment and workshop materials with identified data sources
- Data playbook describing how to conduct workshops based on the environment and data sources
- Report of our activities
- Public website with all materials

#### Describe what outcomes you would use the grant to achieve.
These are the changes in behaviour, decisions or knowledge that your activities or outputs will bring about. Tell us about the people or communities that will most benefit.

We want to demystify data and provide it as a tool to already-engaged youth who want to act on the climate crisis but do not necessarily have a way to do so now.

#### Describe the ultimate impact you would use the grant to achieve.
This is the longer term result of your work, likely to occur beyond the grant period.

In the long-term we would like to build public around climate data and empower already-engaged youth and communities to both use data to contest and direct local climate action while also holding data to a higher standard.

#### What will others be able to learn from your initiative?
We're particularly interested in supporting initiatives that: have significant public policy relevance; enable people to control how data is used to train AI models; and/or involve a novel legal, technological or participatory approach.

Others will be able to draw on our novel participatory approach and adapt it to their context to inform public conversation about climate at the local and regional scale.

#### Describe how the Data Empowerment Fund could support your work beyond providing access to funding.
E.g. by providing guidance on a particular challenge you’re facing, or by connecting you to particular types of expertise.

We are keen to speak to others who have used public data to contest existing policy or action,

#### Are you happy for us to share your application with our partners, the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and Omidyar Network?
If your application is unsuccessful to the Data Empowerment Fund, it may be a good fit with their other interests.

# Other Possibilities

## NST Responsible Design, Development, and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) Program

Grant Details: https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/responsible-design-development-deployment

## NASA Funding Opportunity for Citizen Science Projects

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/nasa-funding-opportunity-citizen-science-projects