Annex I: User-specific license options for national data uploaded to the UNCCD Performance Review and Assessment of Implementation System (PRAIS)

1. UNCCD Mandate

Decision 16/COP.11 para. 9 requests the secretariat to ensure that data and information from the reporting process are available and accessible to all, especially at the national and local levels.

Decision 17/COP.11 para. 14 requests the secretariat to develop a policy to access data and information provided by Parties and other reporting entities, including through the Performance Review and Assessment of Implementation System (PRAIS), building on the practices and policies of other conventions and multilateral bodies, and to utilize intellectual property provisions to protect innovations submitted as best practices while implementing this data access policy.

2. Introduction

Licensing of national datasets aims to empower country Parties reporting through PRAIS to set the terms of use of their national data uploaded or created as part of the reporting process by creating a User-Specific Licence (USL). The default licence for PRAIS data can be seen in the “Terms of Use” section of the site. Parties uploading national datasets to the system have the option to edit the default licence in the Spatial Layers list by clicking on the form provided per uploaded layer. However, while Parties are free to set their terms of use for their national datasets, the default data provided to Parties through PRAIS and Trends.Earth is already in the public domain as described here, and therefore cannot be licensed separately by Parties. For example, the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Land Cover and the International Soil Reference and Information Centre Soil Grids data has been released under an “Attribution-Share Alike” licence. Thus, the use of these datasets is subject to the terms of this licence.

By choosing a USL, the user consents to the chosen licence. It is understood that the following terms and conditions are agreed to:

  • Nothing in or relating to this USL shall be deemed a waiver, express or implied, of any of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) or the United Nations, including its subsidiary organs.

  • The name and emblem of the UNCCD is the property of the UNCCD, which owns all rights to its use. The logo can only be used to identify events and activities related to the UNCCD.

  • The UNCCD shall not be held responsible for any use of information beyond that stipulated in this USL, where prior authorization was not sought and granted in accordance with the conditions expressed and communicated by the UNCCD.

3. Submitting national datasets to PRAIS

There are three mechanisms to share non-default reporting datasets in PRAIS:

  1. Uploading data directly to PRAIS and supplying metadata (information about the dataset) on the form provided.

  2. Via data transfer from Trends.Earth (when using national data for calculating UNCCD indicators in Trends.Earth).

  3. Creating spatial reporting data on the Spatial Data Viewer in PRAIS.

4. Licence Instructions

For every uploaded or created dataset in PRAIS, you may choose to:

  1. Accept the default Creative Commons (CC) licence.

  2. Choose an alternative CC licence which applies additional restrictions on the use of the data, or use an existing licence of your own.

The data licence will determine the level of public user access to national datasets hosted on PRAIS and managed by the UNCCD secretariat for the purposes of reporting. For the purposes of this agreement, the “Data” comprises any national data, with particular recognition of spatial data and associated attribute data provided by the country Party in the reporting process to the UNCCD through its creation on the PRAIS Spatial Data Viewer, using the PRAIS upload tool or via Trends.Earth. The Data may be provided to other PRAIS users on the understanding that they read it and consent to be bound by the terms and conditions of use set out in the USL (if the data is not already in the public domain).

Therefore, country Parties should familiarize themselves with the following options and select the one(s) best suited to their requirements for their Data:

4.1. Creative Commons Licences

There are three regularly used CC licences by which you can license your dataset. However, the UNCCD has an open data commitment and intends to share data provided by Parties with as few constraints and restrictions on its use as possible. Therefore, the data shared by country Parties will be licensed according to the CC Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) licence which means users of the data are free to:

  • Share — Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

  • Adapt — Remix, transform, and build upon the material.

However, in return for using the data, users must respect the following terms:

  • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the licence and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way which suggests that the licensor endorses you or your use.

  • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

To find out more about this licence (translated into all United Nations languages), please visit this link.

Alternatively, two other CC licences are offered to Parties, which impose additional restrictions on the use of the data:

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

This licence allows others to remix, adapt and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

This licence is the most restrictive of the licences, only allowing others to download the data and share it with others as long as they credit you. However, they are not authorized to change it in any way or use it commercially.

4.2. Existing licences

Country Parties may upload or create spatial datasets with an existing data licence which may impose additional restrictions on the use of the data which are not covered in the above options. We invite country Parties to describe the licence and the permissions of use using the form provided.