Shared agreements to care for data and those who generate it

Observatory governance is part of the overall governance of the Amazon Waters Alliance. The same bodies that guide the Alliance define how the Observatory is managed and operated: the General Assembly, which brings partners together and receives accountability reports; the Board of Directors, which approves policies and resolves institutional decisions; the Data Infrastructure Committee, which advises on architecture, interoperability, quality, and security; the Conduct Committee, which impartially examines cases that affect rights, dignity, or trust; and the Technical Secretariat, led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), which coordinates day-to-day implementation. In each initiative, data managers maintain the link between the territory and the Technical Secretariat.

This governance starts from one idea: authority over a datum arises where the datum is generated. Each community, initiative, and partner organization retains governance over its data, and the Alliance complements that governance without replacing it.

A policy for everyone who uses the data

The Data Ethics and Governance Policy applies to all institutions that are part of the Alliance and, at the same time, offers guidance for anyone who uses the Observatory or its data. It sets out the principles, commitments, and responsibilities that accompany information throughout its life cycle, from the moment it is recorded until it is published, used, and preserved.

The data the Observatory integrates arrive through two channels. Most are published directly through the Amazon Waters Alliance, which ensures traceability, recognition, consent, and agreements with communities. Others come from publishers that recognize these same principles and adhere to them.

The Alliance is committed to working under the FAIR principles, so that data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, and under the CARE principles, which recognize collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, and ethics in the use of data from Indigenous peoples and local communities. This combination guides what the policy calls situated openness: opening data as much as possible, while taking into account rights, territories, relationships of trust, and the risks of disclosure.