Implementing Open Data Strategies for Climate Action: Suggestions And Lessons Learned for Government and Civil Society Stakeholders

Full executive summary available in the report. In recent years, the urgency and sheer scale of climate impacts have made clear the need for similarly urgent and ambitious solutions—solutions that will only be feasible with the inclusion of actors across government and society. The cross-cutting nature of the challenge, as well as evolving policy processes at international and national levels, call for action from line ministries to local governments, the private sector, civil society, and academia. Improving the availability and accessibility of climate-related data and information across this range of actors, therefore, is necessary to orchestrating a whole-of-society response to climate change. Often, however, climate-related data is incomplete, fragmented across agencies, or not made available in formats that facilitate its comprehension and reuse, resulting in redundancies and limited value for decision-making. In this context, open data emerges as a promising approach to improve data accessibility and connect data with the ecosystem of users who need them. Advocating for the adoption and implementation of open data policies falls under a broader struggle for transparency—free access to quality information that is relevant for understanding and participating in decisions that are in the public interest. Transparency has long been a mechanism of environmental regulation (e.g., through environmental impact assessments and disclosure of toxic chemical release). It also features prominently in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement to facilitate clarity when communicating and reporting progress. The strengthened attention to climate action transparency sparked by the Paris Agreement, along with governments’ efforts to digitalize assets and services, has spurred new opportunities to improve climate data access and use across a broad range of users within and outside of government. Yet, governments and domestic stakeholders have received little to no guidance toward implementing these shared goals. In this paper we have developed and piloted a methodology to address this gap, enabling key stakeholders and policymakers to assess and improve the openness of datasets most relevant for climate action in their given country context. This paper aims to promote greater accessibility of climate-related data by building government officials’ and other stakeholders’ understanding of the benefits of open data principles and practices, the challenges they may encounter in implementing them, and ways to address these challenges while taking steps to ensure that data publication is impactful, responsible, and sustainable. It primarily addresses national government authorities responsible for climate policymaking and implementation, as well as those responsible for digital government strategies, data management, and knowledge production. Civil society organizations working on climate change action are a secondary audience for this paper and can use the insights provided to better advocate for and support data publication processes. Research for this paper was conducted in collaboration with the Open Data Charter and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This included the development of a draft guide and typology for opening up climate-related data, which was piloted with government and civil society partners in Chile and Uruguay between August 2019 and August 2020. This publication gathers insights from a literature review, iterative consultations with experts and implementers of open data initiatives, and the pilot projects in these two countries.