Crowd-sourcing environmental data via Whatsapp

data_labe, Brazil

data_labe’s CocôZap uses citizen-generated data to demand environmental justice in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas.

In a city where almost one million people live in areas at risk of flooding or landslides, the climate emergency has made things worse, especially for people from low-income, majority Black neighborhoods. 

In Complexo de Favelas da Maré, where many have suffered from flooding and lack of sanitation, data_labe designed CocôZap as a tool for community members to report their experiences with water and sanitation, using WhatsApp to send photos, videos, and stories. 

The data goes into data_labe’s own database, designed to complement governmental data – which often overlooks the disproportionate ways environmental injustices impact people living in favelas. 

CocôZap’s team, made of young people from Maré, has convened with neighbors frequently and produced articles about environmental justice, fostering an ongoing conversation. CocôZap is simple and highly sophisticated at the same time: building citizen data for/with a community is work that requires a deep understanding of complex community needs and a critical view of how insufficient (and, in some cases, biased) “official data” from government sources can be.

With CocôZap and other projects, data_labe has helped to shape the conversation about environmental and climate justice in Brazilian favelas.