This connected conversation brought together different perspectives to explore how rights, harms, and norms can be conceptualised in ways that may be applicable, and helpful, within the data governance discourse. We invited speakers who shared their views about norms in data governance, as well as in the context of the climate crisis, to explore how learning can be shared across these domains.
Our speakers were:
- Siddharth de Souza, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Global Data Justice project and TILT.
- Jojo Mehta,Co-Founder, Executive Director and key spokesperson of Stop Ecocide International.
- Sophie Tomlinson, Director of Partnerships and Communication, Datasphere Initiative
In this Connected Conversation we heard from Siddharth on the opportunity for new norms, before turning to learning from work-in-progress in the Stop Ecocide Campaign with Jojo Mehta, and hearing from The Datasphere Initiative, which explores the interaction of human groups, datasets and norms.
From 2018 to 2023 the Global Data Justice research programme explored an inclusive global conversation on data governance, engaging with groups across the world to explore how far current governance and rights frameworks match with people’s subjective needs. The work shone a light on the gulf between exploitative data practices, and those that could command public backing. This has led Siddharth de Souza & Linnet Taylor to advance the idea of developing new global norms. As they explain:
“We take as a model the international norm-making and enforcement mechanisms used to outlaw unacceptable behaviour on the international scale, for instance apartheid, slavery, and (currently under construction) environmental crimes. Our argument is that we require the same kind of global red lines for illegitimate behaviour with data that we have for other forms of illegitimate behaviour.”
Their work is continuing to explore the question of whether it is possible to establish norms that ban illegitimate data-related practices at scale, given the global policy consensus that data must flow, and that extractive and exploitative practices performed through data are a necessary basis for innovation. They seek ways to re-norm datafication that can counter both illegitimate processes, as in cases such as those of Pegasus or Cambridge Analytica, and illegitimate substantive effects, such as administrative violence performed at scale via digital infrastructures. They take as a model the international norm-making and enforcement mechanisms used to outlaw unacceptable behaviour on the international scale, for instance apartheid, slavery, and (currently under construction) environmental crimes. Their argument is that we require the same kind of global red lines for illegitimate behaviour with data that we have for other forms of illegitimate behaviour.
In the conversation, we discussed how this approach to changing norms relates to, and could learn from, the approach of Stop Ecocide International in establishing “ecocide”, meaning “mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature which is widespread or long-term”, as recognised term that captures the scope and scale of this kind of harm. We also discussed their ongoing campaign to make ecocide a crime recognised in international law, and how this may mirror approaches needed to prevent and counter harms linked to the use of data. In both domains, the need to outlaw unacceptable practices, and the wide ranging damage such practices can cause, was broadly agreed upon. However, the conversation also highlighted some issues and limitations, particularly around the use of rights as a framing, as well as recognising the reality of harms being incurred now while legal change is slow to respond.
The conversation demonstrated a useful exchange of ideas across the domains of data and environmental governance, pointing to an opportunity for more such shared learning in the future.