The Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab is a month-long, flexible unconference that will gather scholars, practitioners, activists, community leaders, and storytellers to examine the ways that climate change data and information infrastructures shape adaptation and mitigation in the Himalayan region. Join the Field Lab to co-design, test and produce new ideas, analytic tools, maps, sensing technologies, data protocols, artistic pieces and communication products that address climate change and its impacts, with the aim of creating a more equitable and pluralistic data landscape in the Himalayan region.

Participants will join us in-person in Kathmandu, Nepal for 1-4 weeks of intensive collaboration between May 13th to June 7, 2024.

You are invited to apply by January 22, 2024 and to share your ideas for projects and activities you would like to participate in during the Field Lab. Read below for more details.

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An Unconventional Format:

The Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab program will follow a flexible and participant-driven unconference format—building from the success of the Understanding Risk Field Lab, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2019. Designed as an alternative to standard conference structures, this format generates more opportunities for co-working, allows participants to co-create the program, and creates time and space to adapt workflows to accommodate emergent topics and ideas.

What you can expect from the unconference format:

Fluid time-frame – Come when you can and stay for as long as you can over a month-long period
Emergent schedule – A few organizers will lead a set of workshops and trainings, but most of the schedule will be created by participants (bring your own project, host a workshop, run an activity).
Production oriented – There will be presentations and discussion sessions, but we will focus on opportunities to make, write, design, code, question, and experiment.
Improvisation: Participants are welcome to join any session or conversation, to try new things and change interests, and to initiate and pursue new projects and ideas
A diverse group of participants and stakeholders – the Field Lab will bring together a variety of different people from across the Himalayan region and beyond
A focus on equity: we will create an inclusive space where alternative ways of knowing and working with climate change data can flourish
Simple rules:
- - Rule 1: Make something. Produce something while you are there: an art piece, policy brief, music, map, digital app, risk model, etc.
Rule 2: Document your work.
Rule 3: Contribute to the unconference community.

Why a month? First, because organizing the Field Lab over a month-long period creates more time and space for different people to engage—for different approaches, workflows, needs, and contributions. Second, because interdisciplinary collaboration is hard, and it takes time to co-develop new ideas, gain momentum, and build meaningful relations.

If you are interested to learn more about the unconference structure and the kinds of work it can enable, please visit https://urfieldlab.com/ or read this paper on “Becoming Interdisciplinary.”

What You’ll Do

Over the course of the Field Lab, participants will be able to choose among a variety of different activities and projects – some will be pre-organized around central themes and others will be created during the Field Lab itself. On any given day, participants will be able to work on things like: creating and sharing datasets, making maps, coding, joining storytelling workshops, developing new analytical tools, writing (papers, policy briefs, creative reflections), geeking out on research methods, or conducting field work around the Kathmandu Valley.

Participants are also invited to help shape the program by co-organizing projects or work sessions that center around particular themes, questions, or data-oriented problems related to climate change in the region. You can organize your activity however you would like: to develop datasets or technologies to address a particular issue, to gather resources, to experiment with new processes and workflows, or to create a new work product. Participants are not required to propose group projects at the time of application, but we welcome your ideas!

Themes

Some of the themes that Field Lab activities will focus on include:

Climate & Disaster Risk Management
User Needs for Climate Change Information
Local and Indigenous Knowledge
Sensing and Sensors
Urban Climate Challenges
Local Energy Transitions
Public Health and Climate Change
Displacement, Migration, and Mobility
Biodiversity & Ecological Change
AI and Machine Learning
Making with Data: Art, Design, Media

Participants are encouraged to apply or expand these themes in new directions, or to propose additional themes in their applications.

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Why Himalayan Climate Data?

The impacts of climate change are intensifying across the Himalayan region, creating new patterns of risk and vulnerability that intersect with other chronic socio-environmental problems and injustices. In recent years, increasing scientific and policy attention has prompted a surge of climate-related research and analysis, which has led to a variety of new data sets, models, toolkits, information portals, and knowledge products. This expansion of available data is encouraging given chronic struggles with data scarcity in the Himalayan, and can support new forms of evidence-based decision making and policy. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that, by themselves, more data and better models will not resolve the social, political, and epistemological challenges at the core of climate change. What kinds of climate change data might support new efforts to build more just climate futures?

The Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab offers participants the opportunity to experiment with for new approaches for creating, sharing, and using climate change data in the Himalayan region. The design of data systems and information infrastructures shape the ways climate change problems are understood and prioritized, as well as whose stories get told. Uneven and unjust patterns of climate change vulnerability are also a product of historical and intersecting patterns of social and political inequality which have excluded certain groups from processes of knowledge production and decision making. How can we develop more equitable and inclusive ways of producing and interpreting climate change data? What would more just approaches to climate data look like in the Himalayan region, and what lessons can we learn in the Himalayan region yield that could inspire other parts of the world?

The goals of the Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab are:

1. Design and co-create new approaches to data and information management that better account for issues of climate injustice and incorporate local and Indigenous knowledge, to improve processes of decision-making and policy formation in the region

Share knowledge about the diverse ways people make, use, and mobilize climate change data in the Himalayan region

Encourage new forms of collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and geographies focused on exploring new practices and processes of working with climate change data

Co-develop public curricula and training materials that will help create more space for critical and pluralistic studies of data within institutions across the Himalayan region

Develop and test new methods for engaging differently-positioned groups in the co-production of climate change data and knowledge

Build an international interdisciplinary network of scholars and practitioners that can facilitate long-term dialogue, knowledge exchange, and collaboration to support future climate change-oriented projects, research, or advocacy efforts

Working in Kathmandu

The urban environment of the Kathmandu Valley is an excellent place to gather and share knowledge from across the Himalayan region and to reflect on the layered challenges climate change poses within the Himalayan region. Home to over 1.5 million people and the capital city of Nepal, Kathmandu is a city struggling to navigate intersecting environmental and public health problems, such as air pollution and water insecurity, which are further complicated by climate change. It is a site where participants can examine the situated and uneven impacts of climate change and an institutional hub where they can engage a variety of institutions working on issues of climate adaptation, climate governance, and climate knowledge management. Working from the Kathmandu Valley will provide participants with an applied context that can help sharpen their own work, ideas, critiques, and innovations.

Throughout the Field Lab, participants will have opportunities to work with and learn from many Kathmandu-based partners and institutions working on climate change issues. At the same time, a variety of other activities—participant projects, site visits for data collection, group field trips, and a handful of special events—will encourage participants to explore the Kathmandu Valley. Field Lab participants will also be encouraged to propose and organize projects that take them beyond the city to other parts of Nepal.

Application

If you are interested in attending the Himalayan Climate Data Field Lab, please submit an application by January 22, 2024 here:

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As part of the application, we ask that you indicate some of the themes you are most interested in as well as the dates when you expect you would be able to attend (in case you cannot attend for the full month). The program details will be, in part, based on the schedule and interests of the participants.

Participants will be selected based on their experiences, interests, and ideas, as well as our commitment to building a diverse global community of experts in emerging approaches to climate change information. Women and members of under-represented communities are especially encouraged to apply, and we are excited to welcome participants from across the broader Himalayan (or Hindu Kush Himalaya) region.

To be clear: there is no fee required to attend the Field Lab. If your application is accepted and you can make it to Kathmandu for at least a week during the programming period, then there are no additional costs to participate (you need only bring your ideas and energy). To help make the Field Lab more accessible and inclusive, travel support and funding will be provided for select participants who commit to attending for the full month. Unfortunately, we will not be able to fund all Lab participants, so we encourage those who are able to seek support from other sources to do so – so that we can use our limited funds to support participants with less access to travel funding.

Accepted participants will be notified in by early February, three months ahead of the Field Lab start date, and the preliminary program will be announced in March. Several digital events and working groups will be organized in advance of the Field Lab where participants will be able to meet and exchange ideas.

Event Organizers

The organizing team for the Field Lab includes researchers and practitioners affiliated with the Toronto Climate Observatory at the University of Toronto, the University of Michigan, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, the United Nations University, and Arup working in coordination with collaborators from the Kathmandu-based Social Sciences Baha and Himalayan University Consortium (HUC).

The Field Lab is made possible with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), the World Bank Disaster Risk Financing Initiative, and the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) of the Government of Nepal.

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