Merlyn Hurtado, Finalist of GEAR cycle II Climate Change and Gender Equality (2021) 

Paris, France 

We know that, globally, women hold over one-third of seats in local decision-making bodies. However, there is a lack of data on the participation of indigenous women in local decision-making. Merlyn, a research and data analyst at the Learning Planet Institute (University of Paris Cité), knows this issue first-hand. In Colombia, there are around two million indigenous peoples, according to the 2018 Census (IWGIA). However, their inclusion in decision-making processes remains limited, especially for women.  

Merlyn has worked with Indigenous communities in Colombia and has witnessed the numerous issues they face, such as gender inequality, discrimination based on ethnicity, and a lack of representation in the climate decision-making that affects them directly. But she has also witnessed the communities’ efforts to regenerate and preserve nature and their ecosystems by using traditional knowledge. Considering this, Merlyn wanted to support Indigenous women’s efforts to make their voices heard by developing a project with and for the Indigenous communities that recognizes indigenous women as environmental guardians and a key part of decision-making processes, due to their role in preserving biodiversity, that could inform climate change policies and programmes. 

To do so, Merlyn applied for the Crowd4SDG GEAR cycle II on the nexus of Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Climate Change (SDG 13), while finishing her second Master’s in Digital Sciences at the University of Paris. Merlyn was selected, became one of the finalists of the Cycle that year and presented her project at the Crowd4SDG Conference at the Geneva Trialogue on 17 March 2022.  

Merlyn’s citizen science project, WOMER, aims to collect and produce data on the impacts of climate change on indigenous women in Colombia. Citizen scientists are Indigenous women themselves. The project also aims to support indigenous organizations to develop project proposals for local authorities and governments and to establish a network of local young indigenous women.   

Merlyn and her former teammate, Longmun Dawam, from Nigeria, worked on developing a digital data collection tool where Indigenous women could input their data on a mobile application. These real-time data could afterwards be used for advocating evidence-based climate change and biodiversity policies aligned with the needs of Indigenous women and for creating projects. Merlyn based her data governance approach on the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, which are specifically developed for Indigenous people.