The GovLab at UNGA 2026: Four Side Events on Stewarding Data and Technology for the Public Good

This September, New York will be buzzing as leaders from around the world gather for the 81st United Nations General Assembly and Climate Week NYC. Against this backdrop, The GovLab is co-organizing four side events focused on questions we believe deserve far greater attention as data and AI reshape our societies.

Across four days, we will convene policymakers, researchers, funders, technologists, civil society leaders, young people, and community representatives around four distinct but connected challenges: 

• youth wellbeing in an age of agentic AI; 

• Indigenous data sovereignty and data commons; 

• technology for peace; and 

• digital public goods for climate action.

The events share a common premise: technological capabilities are advancing rapidly, but realizing their public value depends on the institutions, governance arrangements, questions, and communities we build around them.

Given the size of the venues, these gatherings are primarily invitation-only. However, if you will be in New York during UNGA and are particularly interested in participating in one of the sessions, please email us at datastewards@thegovlab.org. Where space permits, we will be happy to consider additional participants.

September 21 | Q-Lab: Agentic AI and Youth’s Digital Wellbeing

As AI systems become increasingly agentic—acting, remembering, adapting, and initiating—their influence on how young people learn, connect, and develop raises a new generation of questions.

On September 21, The GovLab and Sync by Ithra will convene an interactive Q-Lab on Agentic AI and Youth’s Digital Wellbeing, as part of the official Digital@UNGA 2026 Affiliate Programme.

Rather than beginning with predetermined answers, the session begins with the questions we need to answer. Policymakers, regulators, researchers, technologists, civil society leaders, and youth representatives will work together to identify and prioritize a research agenda capable of better informing policy and practice.

Among the issues we want to interrogate: What changes when AI systems do more than respond—when they remember, anticipate, and act? How should we understand agency, autonomy, dependency, development, and wellbeing in this new environment? And, which questions are we currently not asking?

Monday, September 21, 2026 | Midtown Manhattan | Invitation only

September 22 | Meeting the Demand for Indigenous Data Commons

On September 22, from 12:00–1:30 PM ET, The GovLab/Open Data Policy Lab, UNESCO, and Microsoft will host a special working luncheon focused on meeting the growing demand for Indigenous-led data commons. The session will bring together funders, Indigenous data experts, and other stakeholders to consider the partnerships and investments needed to enable communities to govern how their data are collected, accessed, shared, and used.

The scale of the demand is becoming increasingly clear. This year's open call for the New Commons Incubator, which closed in August, attracted 180 applications from Indigenous-led teams in more than 50 countries.

That response is more than a measure of interest. It points to a global community seeking practical support to develop shared, responsibly governed data resources while retaining sovereignty and agency over data concerning their languages, cultures, communities, and knowledge.

The question for this luncheon is therefore not whether demand exists, but how we meet it.

Bringing together approximately 15–20 Indigenous data experts, current and potential partners, we will explore emerging examples of community-led innovation and focus on two practical challenges: What partnerships and expertise do Indigenous-led teams need? And what funding and support infrastructure could meet that demand at greater scale without sacrificing community agency?

Tuesday, September 22, 2026 | 12:00–1:30 PM ET | Midtown Manhattan | By invitation

September 23 | Unlocking a New Era of PeaceTech

On September 23, The GovLab will join Kluz Ventures for the 2026 Kluz Prize for PeaceTech Awards Ceremony, recognizing people, organizations, and initiatives using emerging technologies to save lives, foster peace, reduce conflict, and protect human dignity and universal human rights.

The evening will combine presentations from the 2026 awardees with a high-level discussion about the opportunities and risks emerging technologies create for peacebuilding.

At a moment when technology is transforming both the nature of conflict and the possibilities for preventing it, PeaceTech asks an increasingly urgent question: How can emerging technologies be designed, governed, and deployed to strengthen peace rather than deepen instability?

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 | 5:00–8:00 PM | Midtown Manhattan

September 24 | Global Digital Public Goods for the Climate Crisis

Finally, during Climate Week NYC, The GovLab and NYU CUSP will join CrisisReady at the Harvard Data Science Initiative for a closed working session on Global Digital Public Goods for the Climate Crisis.

Satellites, sensors, crowdsourcing, AI weather forecasting, and earth-science foundation models are dramatically expanding our capacity to identify vulnerable populations, anticipate hazards, and understand the resilience of the built environment. But greater technological capability does not automatically produce better decisions or more resilient communities.

Drawing on practical experience with initiatives including FloodNet, Heat Risk API, and ReadyMapper, the session will examine what we are learning about building global climate-data infrastructure as a genuine public good—and how global datasets can complement rather than displace local knowledge.

The second part of the conversation will focus on what we have called the data-to-action chasm: the gap between having better data and actually producing better outcomes. We will examine the funding, governance, stewardship, accountability, sustainability, local capacity, and social legitimacy needed to connect digital public goods more directly to public action.

The session is convened by Andrew Schroeder and Satchit Balsari of CrisisReady, and Stefaan Verhulst of The GovLab and NYU CUSP.

Thursday, September 24, 2026 | 10:00 AM–12:00 PM | The Tree House, Doris Duke Foundation, New York City

Four events, one underlying challenge

These four conversations address very different domains, but they are connected by a common concern: How do we ensure that rapidly evolving data and technological capabilities are matched by the funding, governance, institutions, knowledge, and agency needed to put them genuinely in service of people and communities?

For youth and agentic AI, that means identifying the questions policymakers need to answer before technologies become deeply embedded in young people's lives.

For Indigenous data commons, it means moving from demonstrated demand to sustainable community-led infrastructure, expertise, and investment.

For PeaceTech, it means directing technological innovation toward peace, dignity, and human security.

And for climate, it means bridging the distance between unprecedented amounts of data and the decisions and institutions capable of turning those data into meaningful public action.

If you are in New York during UNGA and Climate Week and would be interested in joining one of these conversations, please email us at datastewards@thegovlab.org. Attendance is primarily by invitation and space is limited, but we will consider additional participants where capacity allows.