Despite the urgent need to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, progress remains alarmingly slow, partly due to significant data gaps, especially in developing countries. This article highlights how reusing non-traditional data and adopting social licensing can enhance environmental governance, empower communities, and accelerate action on climate change and the SDGs.
We are currently halfway through Agenda 2030, established in 2015 to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – but we are a long way from achieving them.
Only 17% of the SDGs are on their way to being met. Half of them (48%) are moderately to severely behind schedule, and 35% are stagnating or regressing compared to the 2015 baseline. The various climatic, geopolitical and health crises that have recently disrupted international cooperation may help explain this situation. However, this delay can also be attributed to the lack of data concerning the SDGs, particularly on the climate, despite the proliferation of data used for private purposes (financial, consumption, and online activity, etc.).
These data gaps are of particular concern in developing countries, where the quantity and quality of data, as well as the infrastructure and institutional capacity to manage it, are often limited. At the same time, this data is essential for improving environmental governance, as it enables evidence-based strategic decisions to be taken in a transparent manner. Last but not least, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the fact that the pace and scale of current climate action plans are insufficient to tackle climate change effectively, and that data reuse could be a solution to limit some of its effects.
- Data reuse in the age of datafication: a major opportunity
We have entered an era of datafication, which enables us to make use of non-traditional data – data that it is not collected by national statistical institutes. As in the case of, for example, satellite images, sensor data, and street maps. The use of such data opens up the potential for their reuse in advancing the SDGs, particularly in developing countries plagued by severe resource constraints.
Types and sources of non-traditional data, Source: The GovLab
For example, in Pokhara, Nepal, data reuse has made it possible to set up an OpenStreetMap for natural disaster management. Local residents mapped their neighborhoods and were trained to collect, use and disseminate cartographic data.
- Rebalancing power through social licensing
Despite the abundance of data, many information asymmetries exist, which can be defined as inequalities or disparities in access to data. They give rise to power and influence inequalities between the owners of the data – particularly when it belongs to marginalized communities or is generated within developing countries – and the handful of stakeholders who exploit and use this data.
To address these inequalities, most approaches focus on the notion of consent, i.e. an individual’s agreement to have their data collected and used. It often takes the form of a “checkbox”, and comes with a detailed document on the privacy policy of the organization collecting the data. Nevertheless, consent has many limitations. It is often binary, individual, and given without being fully informed. Moreover, it fails to show how the data could be reused in a way that benefits the communities that own it.
Social licensing is one solution that has emerged to address these issues. This model is inspired by the Sustainable Development License to Operate (SDLO) used in extractive industries in the 1990s. When applied to the reuse of data, social licensing refers to the procedure by which communities are involved in defining the conditions and purposes for reusing their data. It is an implicit and repeated social agreement based on trust, ethics, legitimacy, and perceived alignment with community values. Users can thus express their preferences and expectations on how their data is reused. In practical terms, social licensing can involve public consultations, and the use of feedback or transparent reporting practices.
- Limiting the impact of global warming through ethical data reuse
The ethical reuse of data can enable progress to be made towards achieving the SDGs that aim to support agriculture and mitigate the effects of climate change, two topics at the heart of current concerns.
In Colombia, for example, the reuse of agricultural data has enabled the implementation of an agro-climatic forecasting system that has benefited 34 localities in the country. The aim was to help local farmers improve crop yields and mitigate losses caused by the effects of climate change, by providing information that would enable them to make better planting decisions. To achieve this, a series of panel discussions were held between scientists, experts and farmers to understand how to use the knowledge provided by the predictive agro-climatic system, raise awareness of the potential uses of the datasets and improve both skills and data literacy.
In Senegal, in Kaffrine, Diourbel, Fatick, Louga and Thiès, where rainfall is irregular and unpredictable, the reuse of data has enabled the implementation of a climate warning system involving census data. The project featured a multidisciplinary group model, with national agencies, farmers, climatologists, agronomists, NGOs and the media working together. All these stakeholders agreed to share local knowledge with scientists, and were given access to climate information and weather forecasts.
- Making progress on the SDGs through social licensing
The potential for data reuse is not limited to climate change mitigation. It is of particular interest to developing countries facing severe resource constraints because it can generate a positive impact in several areas such as improving governance, policymaking, economic development, social equity and inclusion, and managing and responding to health crises.
Optimal data reuse requires the active involvement of local stakeholders (population, civil society, companies, institutions, etc.), and helps strengthen a country’s capacities and infrastructures. A very recent report, “Ethical data reuse in developing countries: social licensing through public engagement”, co-edited by the Agence française de développement (AFD) and the think tank The Data Tank,precisely details these issues and provides recommendations for implementing social licenses in developing countries and accelerating towards the SDGs.
