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Bringing Community into

Data Preservation and Environmental Equity

Arika Virapongse, PhD

Principal Consultant & Founder, Middle Path EcoSolutions, LLC

Research Scholar & Community Director, Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship

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Contributions by: Jonathan Blythe, Ruth Duerr, Morgan Wofford, Rupu Gupta

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August 31, 2022- AASG/USGS Data Preservation workshop, Butte, MT, USA - “Data Preservation and Environmental Equity” session

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Arika Virapongse

Middle Path EcoSolutions, LLC & Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship

Social-ecologist & Community Builder

  • People & environment
  • Local knowledge systems
  • Conservation & Development
  • Environmental management & sustainability
  • Teaching & training to work with communities
  • Community Resilience
  • Online distributed communities
  • Current roles: Community Director, Consultant, and Researcher

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Thailand, 2001-2006

Boulder, CO, 2014-current

Northeast Brazil, 2007-2012

Bocas del Toro, Panama, 2013

Amazonas, Brazil, 2013-2014

More info: middlepatheco.com/my-journey-to-community-activation/

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Theory & practice

What we’ll talk about

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Equity centered- community building

Scientific responsibility

Community resilience

Data preservation & Environmental equity

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Why?

Data Preservation

Provides the historical information needed to document and monitor change.

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What counts as data?

Who decides?

Where does data come from?

Who accesses it?

Data for whom & what?

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What is it?

Environmental Equity

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Source: https://www.mobilizegreen.org/blog/2018/9/30/environmental-equity-vs-environmental-justice-whats-the-difference

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What is it?

Climate justice

  • Distributive justice: “allocation of burdens and benefits among individuals, nations and generations”
  • Procedural justice: “who decides and participates in decision-making”
  • Recognition: “basic respect and robust engagement with and fair consideration of diverse cultures and perspectives” ⇒ Representation?

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Citation: IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, et al (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/

Illustration by: Ricardo Levins Morales

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Earth Science data for what and whom?

Community Resilience

“Community resilience applications offer an option to help scientists understand who science is being performed for, so the due representation of disadvantaged and historically underrepresented communities in the scientific process can be improved.”

(Virapongse et al 2022)

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ESIP - Community Resilience cluster | Meetings: Every 3rd Weds at 4 PM US ET | https://wiki.esipfed.org/Community_Resilience

Citation: A. Virapongse, R. Gupta, Z. Robbins, J. Blythe, R. Duerr, C. Gregg (2022). How Can Earth Scientists Contribute to Community Resilience? Challenges and Recommendations. Frontiers in Climate. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.761499/full

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Earth Science data for what and whom?

Community Resilience

Challenges

  • Inequitable representation in scientific decision-making
  • Systemic barriers to succeed in STEM training and work places
  • Disproportionate resources allocated to communities most affected by environmental change
  • Lack of community-level “access” to data and information (logistic & usefulness)
  • Lack of authentic consideration/respect of stake and rights holders input (self-determination)

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Citation: A. Virapongse, R. Gupta, Z. Robbins, J. Blythe, R. Duerr, C. Gregg (2022). How Can Earth Scientists Contribute to Community Resilience? Challenges and Recommendations. Frontiers in Climate. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.761499/full

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Citation: A. Virapongse, R. Gupta, Z. Robbins, J. Blythe, R. Duerr, C. Gregg (2022). How Can Earth Scientists Contribute to Community Resilience? Challenges and Recommendations. Frontiers in Climate. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.761499/full

Figure. Recommendations to the Earth Sciences as to how changes in Earth Science can enhance community resilience

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Earth Science data initiatives are a community effort

  • Community engagement: Making connections with and working together across communities
  • Community building: Creating and developing new communities
  • Community “activation”: Participatory, empowered, and equity-centered approach for supporting the self-determination of communities.

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The contribution of scientific data initiatives to environmental equity can be improved by implementing community activation principles.

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Virapongse, A.; J. Gallagher; B. Tikoff; P. Cornillon; R. Koskela; S. Shingledecker; C. Trabant; B. Hanson (2022). Sustainability models for integrated digital Earth Science. In EarthCube Organization Materials. UC San Diego Library Digital Collections. https://doi.org/10.6075/J0JH3MBN

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Let’s brainstorm!

What is our responsibility as scientists?

  • Learn to see! Learn and practice to see how inequities show up within the scientific establishment (Tanner, 2009), and how biases might show up in data repositories as a result.
  • Broaden our audience! Beyond data for scientists, also think of data for place-based communities.
  • Identify what’s missing! What datasets are missing? What perspectives are missing from our teams?
  • Be uncomfortable! Step out of our comfort zone and explore new topics and communities.
  • Get involved locally! Get some experience of what it really means to be part of social change.
  • Start counting! If in doubt, start counting. Numbers do not lie.
  • Practice! It’s OK to make mistakes. What’s most important is that you try and learning along the way.
  • Invoke the CARE principles! See this slide deck by the ESIP Sustainable Data Management Cluster
  • What else???

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Citation: Tanner, K. D. (2009). Learning to see inequity in science. CBE Life Sci. Educ. 8, 265–270. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.09-09-0070

CARE slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CKoCCFsZw0TQfGv76VnOKMrlCzsBZgEWLnE5qkezOUI/edit#slide=id.gc9af231324_0_5

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What is our responsibility as scientists?

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Citation: A. Virapongse, R. Gupta, Z. Robbins, J. Blythe, R. Duerr, C. Gregg (2022). How Can Earth Scientists Contribute to Community Resilience? Challenges and Recommendations. Frontiers in Climate. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.761499/full

“...scientists supporting government decision-making must recognize and mitigate the challenges that exist in applying the scientific process in communities striving for environmental justice.”

(Virapongse et al 2022)

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Let’s connect!

Arika Virapongse, PhD

Website: www.middlepatheco.com

Email: Av@middlepatheco.com

Middle Path EcoSolutions: Equity centered community building and development; training, consulting, coaching. Mailing list: http://middlepatheco.com/our-community/

Community Resilience: ESIP cluster https://wiki.esipfed.org/Community_Resilience

Ronin Institute: https://ronininstitute.org/

Upcoming products:

  • A micro-practices workbook on community building with Eva Jo Meyers
  • Peer-reviewed paper on Sustainability of Earth Science Data Infrastructure

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