Citizen-Generated Data for Urban Climate Resilience in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Climate change impacts, extreme events, and urban population growth in risk-prone areas, alongside urban extractivism, demand urban resilience-focused public policies. Addressing the climate crisis requires engaging diverse stakeholders and knowledge systems, moving beyond technical expertise. In Rio de Janeiro, since the 2010s, youth activist collectives and grassroots organizations have pioneered citizen-generated data processes to advance climate justice. This abstract highlights participatory research efforts through three strategies: collective mapping, social technologies, and local climate action plans.

Collective mapping processes make it possible to surface local vulnerabilities as well as potential solutions. An example of this is the “Cocôzap” (poop zap), led by the collective data_labe, which facilitates collaborative mapping of basic sanitation conditions in the Maré Favela through a WhatsApp number fed by community-generated reports.

Producing local knowledge and acknowledging local expertise through participatory action research is crucial to community empowerment and engagement. More than just simple reports, can be harnessed to strengthen practices and social technologies for greater resilience in the face of extreme events. Another such example comes from the "Visão Coop" project, which produced a flood response manual and trained local responders in the community of Queimados.

Connecting science and action, these groups are creating and putting into practice their own locally tailored climate action plans. Their agendas address existing challenges related to waste management, access to water, urban heat islands, and mangrove area recovery. Examples include the Maré Climate Action Plan, created by Redes da Maré, and the Agenda Realengo 2030, developed by Casa Fluminense.

Although these initiatives take place at the local scale, they offer a multi-scalar approach that acknowledges state violence and environmental racism among the structural causes of community problems. At the same time, strategies like these can also contribute to the design of evidence-based public policies that respond more effectively to contextual specificities.