Climate data democracy is essential for climate action

Nagendra, Harini and Goswami, Santonu and Mundoli, Seema (2024) Climate data democracy is essential for climate action. PLOS Climate, 3 (7). pp. 1-4.

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Abstract

When NASA provided free worldwide access to the Landsat data archive, scientists greatly expanded the analysis of new locations and novel topics. Of course, data democracy is not just for scientists. When citizens own the rights to generate and access data that speaks to their concerns, democracy is strengthened. Data democracy began to gain prominence in the early 2000s, with the growth of the open data movement. In today’s era of climate change, the term assumes increasing significance. Yet despite the large volume of opensource climate data, access remains largely limited to academia and business. Climate data democracy enables all sections of society to access climate data; understand how to use and interpret it; and be able to use data for climate action. Given the lack of data and severity of the crisis in the Global South, we argue that these regions must take the lead in driving conversations around climate data democracy.

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Nagendra, Harini and Goswami, Santonu and Mundoli, Seema

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