Author: Celina Agaton

The historical global allocation of economic development and humanitarian funding favours Western organizations despite priorities intended to support low income countries with the greatest economic and disaster risks. Local data economies led by local cross-sector communities and free and open source geospatial tools present a more equitable and self-sustaining model to rapidly address longstanding gender, jobs and climate gaps, with improved scientific and implementation methods that produce direct economic, social and climate impacts to local communities starting at 3 months. The results of five simultaneous World Bank studies on open governance, open mapping, gender gap mapping, infrastructure and logistics across six provinces in conflict areas present opportunities to institutionalize local data economies to transform research, funding, policy, and program design into direct impact models.

Despite a $20 Trillion annual budget since 2015, more than 80% of the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are failing. While the UN declared gender equality a human right 75 years ago, 78% of the 231 SDG performance indicators lack gender data. In many economies, women make the majority contributions to their household and economy, yet have the least access to essential household and business infrastructure. OECD reports that from 2019-2020, less than 10% of global funding was sent directly to Global South Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), defined as local communities, local community-based organizations and local non-profit organizations. Less than 1% of gender equality funding went to local women’s organizations.

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