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Data Dialogues

Michelle Cheripka, Open Environmental Data Project, Madhuri Karak

The Data Dialogues podcast brings together multiple perspectives to look at a single environmental data issue.

Created by Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP), where we are building spaces to grow the global conversation on environmental data access and use.

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  • 20 episodes
  • Avg 22 min
  • English
  • Sep 11, 2024 · 16 min

    Why Open + Climate?

    In this bonus episode for Season 3, Madhuri Karak speaks with Michelle Thorne (Green Web Foundation) and Shannon Dosemagen (Open Environmental Data Project), two co-founders of Open Climate. Together, they delve into curated collision, a knowledge commons for climate information, and the importance of open for climate action.

  • S3 · E8
    Aug 15, 2024 · 17 min

    Open Data Linking Observations about Sand Mining

    In this episode, we look into the painstaking compilation of data previously inaccessible and scattered between different government agencies, that is finally shedding light on an extractive industry with massive environmental climate and livelihood consequences: sand mining. In this episode, Madhuri Karak speaks with Siddharth Agarwal about India Sand Watch, an environmental accountability project with an open data platform at its heart.

  • S3 · E7
    Aug 15, 2024 · 25 min

    Emissions Data as an Accountability Mechanism

    We need to burn fewer and fewer fossil fuels to keep greenhouse gas emissions low and ensure the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold isn't breached. But can we manage and reduce something that we didn't measure accurately in the first place? National governments signed the Paris agreement to limit global warming and cut emissions, but the data on fossil fuels—how much there is, how much was burned, and how much of it is in reserve—all of that information comes from... fossil fuel companies. In this ep

  • Aug 15, 2024 · 21 min

    Los derechos y recursos de las comunidades afrodescendientes

    Los datos son una pieza clave para que las comunidades puedan reclamar sus derechos y recursos, y la ausencia de datos puede dificultar ese proceso. En este episodio, la presentadora Madhuri Karak habla con José Luis Rengifo, director del Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) y Omaira Bolaños, directora de los Programas de América Latina y Justicia de Género de la Iniciativa de Derechos y Recursos (RRI). José Luis y Omaira son dos representantes de una coalición que lleva décadas trabajando en pos

  • S3 · E6
    Aug 15, 2024 · 21 min

    The rights and resources of Afro-descendant communities

    Data is a key piece of how communities make claims on rights and resources—and the absence of data can make that claims making process difficult. In this episode, host Madhuri Karak speaks with Jose Luis Rengifo, the director of the Process of Black Communities (PCN) and Omaira Bolaños, the director of the Latin America and Gender Justice Programs at Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI). Jose Luis and Omaira are two representatives of a decades-long coalition effort seeking territorial rights f

  • S3 · E5
    Jul 30, 2024 · 25 min

    Strategic Observations for Climate Intervention in the Gulf Coast

    What does it mean to take back knowledge and data about our environments, from the hands of those who monopolize this knowledge for centuries, and use that knowledge to extract value from land and people alike? In this episode, Madhuri Karak speaks with Scott Eustis, the community science director at Healthy Gulf, about what taking back ownership of knowledge and data about our landscapes, our bodies, looks like in the Gulf Coast of the US.

  • S3 · E4
    Jul 30, 2024 · 15 min

    The One Stop Shop for Air Quality Data

    A warming planet makes smog worse; it leads to more frequent and severe wildfires, which release dangerous particulate matter. Any meaningful intervention to improve air quality requires data, but finding accurate air quality data—usable by researchers, community members and policy makers alike—is incredibly difficult. In this episode, Madhuri Karak speaks with Colleen Rosales and Chris Hagerbaumer of OpenAQ about their efforts to harmonize and standardize air quality data.

  • S3 · E3
    Jul 23, 2024 · 16 min

    "Open" as a Spectrum

    Climate information exists in a lot of different formats: there are reports, datasets, peer reviewed research articles, blogs, videos, and more. If we're going to have a real shot at tackling the climate crisis, then the knowledge we've produced about climate change needs to be open—but how do we give permission while protecting creators from harm?. In this episode, Madhuri Karak speaks with Monica Granados, who leads the Open Climate campaign at Creative Commons, about the role of licenses in b

  • S3 · E2
    Jul 23, 2024 · 22 min

    Unpacking the Survival Guide to Humanity (aka the IPCC report)

    The latest UN IPCC report (AR6) runs... 30,000 pages. For those of us who don't have the time to read this in full, how do we incorporate the golden standard of climate science into our own work? In this episode, Madhuri speaks with Shweata Hegde, a developer at #semanticClimate, who is building a tool that will break AR6 down and turn it into an accessible resource.

  • S3 · E1
    Jul 23, 2024 · 17 min

    Wikipedia as Climate Infrastructure

    When we first start learning about something, Wikipedia is often our first stop. But where does Wikipedia fit in when it comes to climate change - a complex, multi-dimensional, and urgent topic like no other? In this episode, Madhuri speaks with Evelin Heidel, the Program Director of Wikimedistas de Uruguay about how Wikipedia lays the groundwork for our understanding of climate change.

  • S3 · E0
    Jul 16, 2024 · 2 min

    Season 3 Trailer

    Season 3 of Data Dialogues features interviews with different folks working at the intersection of the open and climate movements. In the trailer, host Madhuri Karak outlines what you can expect from this season's guests.

  • S2 · E6
    Apr 18, 2023 · 30 min

    From mapping to monitoring: the international scope of resistance

    In the season's final episode, we zoom out: palm oil companies are traveling to new countries searching for cheap land and easy land acquisition laws. Toolkits resisting land grabbing by palm oil are traveling, too. Madhuri looks at how mapping and monitoring initiatives from Indonesia have moved across borders to take root in Liberia in Western Africa.

  • S2 · E5
    Apr 11, 2023 · 26 min

    Drones, birds & the gray in between

    What does mapping sound like? What does it feel like? In our second-to-last episode, Madhuri moves beyond the visual to wrestle with how we might center indigenous ways of knowing, through multi-sensory and multi-species ethnography.

  • S2 · E4
    Apr 4, 2023 · 32 min

    Kinipan's fight against palm oil

    Madhuri follows the mapping process into the mountains of Borneo to speak with indigenous leader Pak Effendi Buhing. He provides testimony about how the Dayak community are using participatory mapping against palm oil conglomerate PT-SML.

  • S2 · E2
    Mar 21, 2023 · 26 min

    Right place, right time: the ideal conditions for a OneMap policy

    Global powers outsourced climate responsibilities to Indonesia with a deceptively simple idea: the Global North would pay Indonesian villages to not deforest. But you need to know who owns the forest being protected so you can pay them to protect it - and that was the role assigned to OneMap.

  • S2 · E1
    Mar 14, 2023 · 18 min

    More maps, more problems

    This season navigates the promises and frustrations of Indonesia’s OneMap policy: a decade-long, ongoing effort to resolve land conflicts with environmental data. Host Madhuri Karak delves into the limitations of modern cartography and indigenous struggles over being seen.

  • S1 · E18
    Mar 15, 2022 · 50 min

    18. Building the two-way street between "experts" and "community"

    What does it take for scientists and lawyers to really work with communities - and how does it change them? In the final episode of Season 1, Angela talks with Natasha Udu-gama and Jill Habig about how they set up the conditions for community relationships, making the case for personal transformation and culture change in government, academia, and the law.

  • S1 · E17
    Mar 15, 2022 · 19 min

    17. Listening differently: alternatives to complaints-based systems

    Community members should not have to be "extraordinary" to access their rights. Jill Habig, founder of Public Rights Project, uses the law to change economic and environmental systems that allow only extraordinary individuals to defy them. In this episode, she shares ways that she's found local governments, by listening just a little differently, have strengthened their bonds with communities and protected the environment.

  • S1 · E16
    Mar 15, 2022 · 22 min

    16. Is "more data" the relevant question?

    Natasha Udu-gama, of AGU's Thriving Earth Exchange, connects residents to professional scientists to answer local environmental questions. Surprise (for anyone working with Western science)! Natasha challenges us to look “further than data” to find the best information and considers how we can repurpose the knowledge we already have.

Showing 1–20 of 20 episodes