Harnessing Data for a Sustainable Future
By Corey Halbert, Data Commons Climate Lead, TechSoup
Google’s Data Commons presents a unique opportunity for civil society organizations to leverage publicly available data to inform their work, measure their progress, and contribute their own data to present a comprehensive picture of their communities and inform decision-makers.
This past year, TechSoup has hosted a series of three virtual briefings to showcase the potential of Data Commons. Read our overview and watch the event recording from the first two briefings: Democratizing Access to Data and Leveraging Public Data for Social Impact.
TechSoup recently hosted the third in this series, Harnessing Data for a Sustainable Future. What follows is a recap of what was discussed, along with some information on how you can get involved.
The Event
On June 7, 2024, TechSoup shared the stage with climate NGOs in a virtual briefing on leveraging climate data for broader impact. This briefing showcased the potential of collaboration and data-driven approaches to develop sustainable solutions across NGOs, the private sector, and government agencies. It also demonstrated Data Commons’ strength in fostering interdisciplinary research by enabling researchers to seamlessly combine environmental data with social and economic information. This cross-sector data provides a richer understanding of climate challenges and unlocks deeper insights for tackling complex climate issues.
You can view the recording of the event below:
Why This Matters
Data is critical to understanding and addressing key local and global challenges. Finding and organizing the necessary data is difficult. Google’s Data Commons consists of three main elements:
- Google’s Public Data Commons, which aggregates data from over 200 sources. This data has been normalized by Google engineers so that it can be queried via AI, allowing for faster exploration of the available datasets.
- A framework for data publishing that includes a set of schemas based on Schema.org and a set of APIs. Use of these schemas and APIs allows data to be joined across multiple instances of Data Commons.
- A suite of tools that allow people to access and publish data from the site. They also allow people to set up their own instance of Data Commons, incorporating their own dataset on top of Data Commons.
With funding from Google.org and in collaboration with the Data Commons team, TechSoup is working to ensure that civil society organizations can access and use the data in Google’s Public Data Commons, publish data using the framework, and use the associated suite of tools to work with the data. You can explore this work in TechSoup’s Data Commons instance.
The Interdisciplinary Data Challenge of Climate Change
Climate change presents us with a uniquely broad challenge. The scale of climate impacts are not limited to one ecosystem or one community; they are felt worldwide and in a huge range of industries and organizations. They need to be addressed with a larger perspective. This necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to data collection and analysis. Data scientists, climate researchers, economists, sociologists, and even political scientists all have crucial pieces of the puzzle.
By working together to integrate environmental data with social and economic information, we can gain a more holistic understanding of how climate change is unfolding and the multifaceted solutions required. Only through this collaborative effort can we turn the vast amount of climate data into actionable insights that will guide effective adaptation and mitigation strategies.
A purely environmental dataset might show rising sea levels threatening coastal communities. But to develop effective solutions, we need to integrate this data with economic information. This could involve analyzing property values, infrastructure costs, and potential job losses. Sociologists can contribute data on community dynamics and displacement risks. By combining these perspectives, we can craft targeted adaptation plans that not only address rising sea levels but also consider the economic and social fabric of the affected communities. It’s through this collaborative analysis of diverse datasets that we can move beyond isolated problems and craft effective solutions for a sustainable future.
Lowering the Barriers to Climate Data Discoveries with Data Commons
Climate NGOs face a monumental challenge — addressing the vast and complex issue of climate change. The fight against climate change is hampered by data limitations for understaffed NGOs. Crucial climate data is often siloed in various locations, making it difficult and time-consuming to access the information they need to make informed decisions and take effective action. Data Commons offers a powerful solution by lowering the barriers to discovering the climate data needed.
These digital repositories function as central hubs, storing and organizing climate data collected from all corners of the world. This eliminates the time-consuming process of searching for data across disparate sources, allowing researchers to focus on analysis and innovation.
By providing access to supplementary datasets, Data Commons enables researchers to explore new angles and uncover hidden connections. Imagine a team studying deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Data Commons allows this team to not only access satellite imagery of deforestation rates, but also integrate data on local economic factors and land ownership patterns to build a more comprehensive picture of the issue. This enriched data empowers NGOs to craft stronger grant proposals, develop data-driven policy recommendations, and even create clear and impactful visualizations to raise awareness and inspire action without the need for a data team.
Leveraging Data Commons for Climate Work
During the event, we heard from Jorge Rivera, data director at the ONE Campaign. The ONE Campaign uses data to advocate for the investments needed to create economic opportunities and healthier lives in Africa. Through its data and analysis platform, data.one.org, ONE has been enhancing accessibility, utilization, and sharing of international development data.
In late 2023, ONE launched ONE Data Commons with the ambition of becoming the key open repository of international development and development finance data. Rivera and his team are now developing a new version of data.one.org, powered by Data Commons, to unify its tools to explore, analyze, and understand data from developing countries, with a particular focus on Africa.
The ONE Data Commons hosts a range of climate finance data, one of which is its Climate Finance Files. This dataset is a powerful tool ONE uses to shed light on how much climate financing is actually transferred to developing countries, where it is going, and for which purposes.
“The Climate Finance Files reveal that donor governments and institutions are significantly underdelivering on their climate finance commitments,” Rivera said. “Between 2013 and 2021, nearly two-thirds of international climate finance commitments were not disbursed or were misclassified. In 2021, the 20 most climate-vulnerable countries received only 6.5 percent of the climate finance they needed, and heavily indebted nations often received climate finance in the form of new debt. This highlights the urgent need for more transparent, accurate, and accountable climate finance reporting and delivery.”
By making this data accessible on Data Commons, others can investigate climate finance flows alongside additional context from environmental, social, and economic datasets. This empowers researchers and civil society to gain deeper insights into the requirements of climate-vulnerable countries, enabling them to advocate for more precise and impactful funding strategies.
Speakers
- Jorge Rivera, The One Campaign, Data Director
- Corey Halbert, TechSoup Global, Climate Lead
Get Involved
Interested? Connect with us and others who care about public data and share relevant projects you’re aware of in your region. Reach out to our climate lead, Corey Halbert, at chalbert@techsoup.org or our Data Commons team at DataCommons@techsoup.org.
Want to support this work more broadly? Consider donating to TechSoup.
