TReNDS Helps Share the Vision of a Digital Ecosystem for the Planet

Written by Hayden Dahmm

SDSN TReNDS participated in the 2019 Data for Good Exchange conference on September 15 at the Bloomberg World Headquarters in New York. In collaboration with UN Environment, TReNDS helped to facilitate a workshop on “Building a Digital Ecosystem for the Planet”. UN Environment’s digital ecosystem proposal is described and endorsed in the forthcoming TReNDS report, Counting on the World to Act.

SDSN TReNDS participated in the 2019 Data for Good Exchange conference on September 15 at the Bloomberg World Headquarters in New York. This year’s conference was centered around data science for the SDGs, and it assembled a multi-sectoral audience to discuss the themes of “People”, “Prosperity and Peace”, and “Planet”. Keynote addresses were delivered by TReNDS member and UN Statistics Division Assistant Director Francesca Perucci and Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) Director Claire Melamed. Presentations and workshops throughout the day addressed a range of topics critical to the SDGs, from increasing the availability of administrative data and the use of data by city leaders, through ways of mitigating climate change with improved data sources.

In collaboration with UN Environment, TReNDS helped to facilitate a workshop on “Building a Digital Ecosystem for the Planet”. The workshop provided an introduction to UN Environment’s vision of a digital ecosystem, which would serve to strengthen the availability, analysis, and application of environmental data the world over. Specifically, this ecosystem would reduce critical gaps in understanding, resourcing, and action in making our environment more sustainable through an interconnected, scalable socio-technological network. Cross-sector partnerships and activities would address the areas of data, infrastructure, algorithms and analytics, and insights and applications. Some initial recommendations include the development of agreed-upon principles for open source software; specifying conditions on data release and disclosure when using public funds to finance private data collection; and using citizen science to validate other data through ground observations.

TReNDS, GPSDD, and the Wilson Center also presented on their related experiences. Attendees then discussed how a digital ecosystem could engage the public and private sectors, as well as how to address funding issues and realize the potential of data science techniques to better understand the environment. UN Environment’s digital ecosystem proposal is described and endorsed in the forthcoming TReNDS report, Counting on the World to Act. You can read a discussion piece from UN Environment about the proposal here.