Data is a critical asset for nature restoration. Yet the siloing of nature data continues to limit the world’s ability to understand, manage, and restore our natural assets and ecosystems. Cecil believes that a data sharing culture can celebrate and appropriately compensate land stewards, improve cross-sector collaboration, and lead to new insights and knowledge - ultimately raising the bar on integrity in nature markets on the whole. The Nature Data Sharing Initiative (NDSI) was created to help accelerate this future.

The current NDSI version includes resources that bring the sector together to publish the following:

• an introduction, overview, and guidance notes around nature data and Nature Practitioner’s field data;
• a guide on practical steps for sharing data; and
• a data sharing worksheet and sample data sharing agreement template.

Cecil developed these resources in collaboration with David Rountree and Emily Cravigan from Allens; Anthony Lloyd and Kendrick Deng from Ashurst; Alex Logan, Connor Jordan, and Tom Walker from Cecil; Florian Reber from Chloris Geospatial; Climateworks; Megan Pillsbury from Dunya Analytics; Gabi Ceregra from Food Agility; Sara Schmude and Bert Glover from Impact Ag; Kate Wing from Intertidal Agency; Victor Alloy and Romain Fau from Kanop; Paul Young from Kita; Ňkwi Flores; Karl Burkart from One Earth; Alexis Moyer and Ed Mitchard from Space Intelligence; Samichhya Khadka; Camille Goldstone-Henry from Xylo Systems; and Chris Tolles from Yard Stick.

Importantly, this is a living set of resources and will continued to be updated based on feedback - we know there are and will continue to be significant gaps; current known gaps include specifics for farmers, citizen scientists, common land, and other local charities and community action groups. If you’d like to share your expertise to help us build out this document and/or share stories of how you are using this work, please contact us at [email protected].

Please use this resource however is most useful. We hope it enriches your thinking and helps save your team’s time, protect against missteps, and create new opportunities.

Disclaimer: This document is not legal advice and is for guidance only. Users are encouraged to obtain professional advice tailored to their specific circumstances and to exercise their own skill and care when using any information contained in this document.