Insight slides from working with the Open Environmental Data Project brain trust during October-December 2020. These insights were generated from conversations around this body of work: https://www.openenvironmentaldata.org/a-new-model-series

1. Open Environmental Data Project
Insights
From October to December 2020, working with a “brain trust” and others who we have
been individually in conversation with, these insights were created to provide a high-level
augmentation to our vision and approach. Each insight combines a core concept and
theme that we’ve synthesized with a future focused consideration as we move into the
next year.

2. Human systems require narratives to keep them alive and fluid,
and this is our communication unit. The dominant narratives of
many human systems in response to environmental
degradation are “we can’t,” “but scarcity,” and “its inertia.”
These are unhelpful for progress towards creating a shared,
future-focused generative environment. The insights in this
section help pave a path towards populating new narratives to
augment, replace and generate space for future thinking.

3. Set a vision based on hopeful futures.
Create generative imaginaries focused on possibilities.

4. What does winning
the imagination look like?
Offer a compelling vision of what a generative environment looks like.

5. This topic is maze-like.
Wayfinding really matters.
Where else are there roadmaps that can be pointed to?

6. Demonstrate how to generate jobs
for every generation
If its short-term jobs vs long-term environmental impact, we all stand to lose.

7. Getting data to be useful is difficult.
Gaining trust is herculean.
What activities achieve both?

8. Data ecosystems and the stakeholders, rights holders and
other actors interacting with these systems are governed by
various socio-technical contexts. What aspects are
problematic? Why are they difficult? And what are the
changes we wish to see in regards to these problems? The
insights and directionality in this section expose some of
these problems and suggest interesting possibilities.

9. Environmental data is a public good.
Just like air, land and water are public goods, the data about them should be public.

10. Data alone doesn’t cut it.
Identify incentives and levers — economic, legal, communal — as points of intervention.

11. What does a local, environmental “scene”
look like?
Identify the systems to solve for and also the places where “models” won’t scale.

12. “The best example of data use is…”
The narrative around socio-technical infrastructure is critical.

13. Data collection is a political act.
For both good and ill…

14. The groups we create, communities that are either built or
inherent, and systems we interact in experience power
asymmetries and human bias. In the context of environmental
protection and management what are the impacts and how can
we navigate these asymmetries to uncover, respect and
include a diversity of voices in the “datafication” of our world?
The insights in this section offer opportunities to dive deeper
into these questions.

15. Break down “inclusion”
Radical community input and public participation can sometimes advance
status quo, stagnating social change and progress.

16. We’ve stopped speaking productively
to one another.
There is a need to both create new mechanisms and resurrect old
mechanisms to support productive dialogue.

17. Community voices provide a great tool
Demonstrate the value through encouraging many places of input, some
previously not considered.

18. What signals a good environment /
what signals a bad environment.
Local communities see the benefits of extraction, others see the costs,
and some see both.

19. The environmental space needs coherent
systems for identifying power structures
And to provide roadmaps for how to address systemic bias.

20. Government legislation isn’t the only option.
Explore a diversity of opportunities from cultural shifts in legal frameworks to ballot
initiatives and successes in setting local precedent.