Open Environmental Data Project

New from us: a map of EPA EJ grants awarded through the IRA that could be affected by proposed DOGE cuts. These hundreds of projects would reach thousands of communities and improve the lives of countless Americans. All of these projects together cost taxpayers less than ONE (1) B-2 stealth bomber (the US has 19). Public Environmental Data Partners designed this to help Americans come to terms with the effects of these US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cuts—we hope this is a jumping-off point for e.g. journalists to tell stories of local impacts or for economists to evaluate how these cuts will affect communities. Each time you refresh the map you'll see a different snapshot of expected outcomes from these grants—we tried to show both systemic effects and specific impacts of these proposed funding cuts. Some examples: - "developing a tool for water equity and water testing in Detroit and training youth in environmental justice..." - "40 reliable low-cost sensors to monitor PM2.5 pollution" - "a reduced energy burden, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased community strength and sustainability..." - "increased resilience and safety for community members during extreme weather events" Use the tool here: https://lnkd.in/ecE4DBGf Map wizardry by Eric Nost and we have lots of partners in this work to thank but who we can't name here—you know who you are! Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), Environmental Policy Innovation Center, Open Environmental Data Project, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) #environmentaljustice #fedcuts #EPA #DOGE #ej #IRA

?? What We're Reading: March 2025 Edition ?? Every month, we publish what we're reading, watching, and listening to on topics including #DataGovernance, #OpenSource, #CommunityScience, #EnvironmentalJustice, #CivicVoice, and #ArtificialIntelligence. Here's our list for this month: "U.S. State Department Shuts Down Pollution Monitoring Abroad" by Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer for The New York Times ?? https://lnkd.in/gQxfEBX6 "Why a jury trial in North Dakota has environmentalists so worried" by Anna Phillips for The Washington Post ?? https://lnkd.in/gZhjEb5Z "The Case for Local and Regional Public Engagement in Governing Artificial Intelligence" by Stefaan Verhulst, PhD and Claudia Chwalisz for The Data & Policy Blog ?? https://lnkd.in/gTxdTyCR "Supreme Court makes it harder for EPA to police sewage discharges" by Mark Sherman for AP 24x7 news ?? https://lnkd.in/g3T6APgC "Trump's Declaration Allows Musk's Efficiency Team to Skirt Open Records Laws" by Minho Kim for The New York Times ?? https://lnkd.in/gvJVHQew "Community scientists provide knowledge and public education and help enforce environmental regulations in social-ecological systems" by Ryan O'Connor, Giulio De Leo & Nicole Ardoin for nature.com's Communications Earth &?Environment ?? https://lnkd.in/g6JVKUD3 "Standards" by Jeffrey Pomerantz & Jason Griffey ?? https://lnkd.in/gQHv_Zca You can check out more of what we're reading at: https://lnkd.in/dJsZWNRw #ReadingList #Reading #ReadingRecommendation #Data #OpenData #ClimateAction #ClimateChange #ClimateJustice #ToRead #US #StateDepartment #AirMonitoring #NorthDakota #JuryTrial #PublicEngagement #ArtificalIntelligence #SupremeCourt #EPA #Sewage #DOGE #OpenRecords #CommunityScience #CommunityScientists #PublicEducation #EnvironmentalRegulation

Our March Newsletter is out now! Catch up on OEDP's recent goings-on at https://lnkd.in/ggAvEmdE

We're always grateful for the international community of digital and human rights practitioners who attend RightsCon every year. Here are some reflections from Research & Policy Manager Emelia Williams on this year's sessions, conversations, and questions that resonated the most??? ?? Katya Abazajian and I co-led a workshop on situating environmental data and rights in embodied landscapes. I was so jazzed to learn from our participants and their respective contexts as we explored tactics communities can use to reclaim control over their data and get the most of out of it! Our group truly understood the assignment and Katya and I are excited to turn the outcomes of the workshop into a zine later in the year. ?? ?The best panel I attended was called “Tech giants and genocide: indigenous struggles for digital justice,” featuring digital rights activists in Palestine, Myanmar, China, and Tigray as they confront big tech platforms’ complicity in human rights violations (e.g., the spread of hate speech, disinformation, and incitement to violence, among others). These are the perspectives I want to hear more from when we talk about big tech, AI, and surveillance; I so appreciated their pragmatism and candor. Panelists included: Nadim Nashif ?? ???? ????, Timnit Gebru, Jalal Abukhater, Haiyuer Kuerban, and Htaike Htaike Aung. ?? ?I attended an insightful workshop led by Jess Peake, Sofia Kooner, and Dr. Alexa Koenig, colleagues at University of California, Los Angeles - School of Law and the Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law, on using open source information (OSI) for environmental activism. Digital open source investigations is a new topic for me, but it was great to learn about the tools that can heighten the visibility of environmental harms and offer critical ways to document and monitor. ?? ?As usual, and rightfully so, surveillance is a huge topic at RightsCon, but I especially appreciated the sessions on resisting copaganda and how to connect fiction to tech justice from the folks at DWeb, COMPOST CREATIVE, and Fight for the Future and in particular: Mai Ishikawa Sutton, Lia Holland, and?Malka Older. The conversation on how surveillance technologies are represented/misrepresented in fiction was particularly rich; one person incited this line of questioning that has stuck with me: Who are we protecting with surveillance and who are we surveilling? Who gets to be “private” and who has to earn their privacy? #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Privacy #DataPrivacy #Surveillance #OpenSourceInformation #OpenSource #OSI #Environment #EnvironmentalJustice #ClimateChange #ClimateJustice #OpenData #RightsCon25 #Taipei #BigTech #Reflection #HumanRights #HumanRightsViolation #DigitalJustice

RightsCon 2025 is a wrap! I was energized and inspired by the work of human rights defenders around the world who have mountains of experience to share with us as we in the US head into more trying times. Folks who attended our workshop "Data Has a Beating Heart: Situating Environmental Data in Embodied Landscapes" with Open Environmental Data Project's Emelia Williams heard a little bit about how we're re-defining data rights based on an expanded understanding of peoples' rights to feel represented in datasets and control the narrative around environmental injustices in their communities. I was also happy to join a panel led by the Digital Futures Lab and facilitated by Dona Mathew to discuss ways that geographic AI will shape environmental actors' access to data justice. Thank you to Ruth Schmidt, PhD and Pyrou C. for an engaging conversation! I was very excited about the range of speakers in other sessions weaving concepts of Indigenous data sovereignty and data embodiment into efforts to protect Indigenous peoples' lands and our environment. I'm re-energized to continue my work with the Local Data Futures Initiative to develop definitions and educational tools or resources for people organizing on the ground to participate in decisions about how personal and community data is used in systems. In case you missed it, I just launched a new section of my newsletter called Dispatch from the Data Garden where folks can keep up with my pilot projects and emerging lessons in data rights education. Please consider supporting the newsletter as a paid subscriber and share with anyone who needs these resources for data justice education in grassroots spaces! https://lnkd.in/g6Th25tt

"The Ways We Combat, Resist, and Mend": An Attention Inventory from Katie Hoeberling Each month, a different OEDP team member shares a list of what they’re paying attention to—whether big topics or small, these “attention inventories” outline a few of the ideas that shape our work, but don’t necessarily show up in the policy memos or playbooks we write. These inventories feature the ideas that flit persistently between the front and back of our minds. They’re our thoughts on the browser tabs, the newspaper headlines, the sections of the bookstore that we keep coming back to, again and again. This month’s Attention Inventory is compiled by Katie Hoeberling, Director of Policy Initiatives at OEDP. Katie talks about: ??? the fallout from recent changes in administration and our work with Public Environmental Data Partners, ?? the wildfires in Los Angeles, ?? resisting tech monopolies and the uncritical use of generative AI, and ?? visible mending. Read more at https://lnkd.in/g78BF9kC ??? cover image from Obi Kaufmann's "The State of Fire" #ArtificialIntelligence #EatonFire #PalisadesFire #Wildfire #California #CA #AI #DIY #VisibleMending #Mending #Kintsugi #OpenData #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateJustice #EnvironmentalJustice #ChatGPT #Misinformation #NewNormals

Come join us for the next Open Climate Community Call on March 11! ? 4 pm PT / 7 pm ET / 12 am GMT (Mar 12) Our goal for these calls is to create a community space where anyone using open tools or approaches for climate justice can meet others working on similar issues and projects. This call will be co-hosted by Monica Granados (Creative Commons) and Michelle Cheripka (OEDP). Register for this call at https://lnkd.in/g_Hdfhze #Call #CommunityCall #Open #OpenData #OpenSource #OSS #OpenHardware

Hearts are full this week from some in-person team time at the Rita Allen Foundation Civic Science Fellows (CSF) and Partners Plenary??? L-R: Brittany Janis (OEDP Executive Director), Shannon Dosemagen (OEDP Founder & Senior Fellow, CSF Alum 2020), Emelia Williams (OEDP Research & Policy Manager and CSF Alum 2021), Cathy Richards (OEDP Data Inclusion Specialist and CSF 2025), and Natasha U. (OEDP Board Member)

“It’s our library; it’s our history. This data is funded by taxpayers, so we definitely don’t want all that knowledge to be lost when we can keep it, store it, potentially do something with it and continue to learn from it.” - Cathy Richards As federal climate data continues to disappear, we're working to back it up on screening-tools.com. Thanks to MIT Technology Review for sharing the work we're doing as part of Public Environmental Data Partners ? #OpenData #ClimateData #EnvironmentalData #CEJST #OpenGov #DataPreservation

We're just 2 weeks away from RightsCon 2025! Join Emelia Williams (OEDP) and Katya Abazajian (Local Data Futures) on Tuesday, February 25 at 9 am for their in-person session: "Data has a beating heart: Situating environmental data and rights in embodied landscapes" ?? #RightsCon25 #Taipei #RightsCon #Data #OpenData #Environment #ClimateChange #EnvironmentalData