Set up a data council

A data policy is easy to write badly. A platform publishes a page of rules, asks partners to tick a box, and calls the result consent. When GainForest announced its Data Council in 2024 it started from the opposite end: "rather than imposing them, we aim to co-create these policies."

A council is the practical answer to the questions in the first half of this course. Who decides what goes public? Who answers when a researcher asks for the recordings? Who sets the price? Who can pause a tool? Without a named group of people, those questions get answered by whoever happens to be holding the laptop.

GainForest has worked with councils at three levels.

Inside one project. During the XPRIZE Rainforest, four Indigenous and local communities around Manaus formed an Indigenous Data Council, chaired by Marina Mura. It was a full member of the ETH BiodivX team, it approved the prices paid for data collected during the finals, and a signed benefit-sharing agreement set out what the communities would receive. When Parque das Tribos joined the work in early 2024, it was invited to become a governing member and accepted.

Across a network. In July 2024 GainForest set up a council for its whole partner network. Next to three GainForest staff sat three regional representatives elected by community partners: Justine Bual from Masungi Georeserve in the Philippines, Simon Peter Okoth from Bees and Trees Uganda, and Gabriel Silva de Souza Nunes from Manaus. Its job was to co-create data policies, review them over time, and give partners a place to raise concerns about ownership and rights.

In every community. Today GainForest encourages each community that publishes through its app to form its own data council of three to five people. We encourage a mix of voices: women, elders and other knowledge holders, healers, and in many places young people. The council meets on its own, decides what can be published and what stays private, and posts short updates about its work. On the GainForest app, an organisation can list its council members on its public page. The 2026 Rewilding the Web grants set aside $50 for each council member, on top of the $1,000 project grant.

That last detail matters. Council work is work. People give up evenings to argue about which bird calls can go online, and that time should be paid or recognised in a way the community chooses.

A council can also set prices. In GainForest's Conservation Data Income model, the community's council decides what its data is worth. David Dao gave two example prices in a 2025 essay: one US cent per minute of forest recording and five cents per megabyte of drone imagery. The point of the example is who sets the number.

Keep the council small and regular. Three people who meet every month and write down what they decided will do more than a large committee that meets once. The community at Parque das Tribos is already adding members to its council and planning its own BioBlitz events, without us.