Collective Intelligence in Climate Mitigation
Collective Intelligence in Climate Mitigation
Mitigation-based collective intelligence projects in the Global South tend to address doing and data gaps, and span across different geographical scales. For example, several forestry initiatives are international programs where common, well-tested protocols for environmental observation are applied by local level initiatives. Alongside a contribution to coordinating actions, these initiatives help to fill data gaps by monitoring progress on a single issue in a standardized way. In contrast, waste management initiatives tend to respond to specific local needs, helping to better coordinate actions between diverse stakeholders in cities. These examples also capture data about the scale of the problem, particularly plastic pollution, or bring additional value by surfacing data about invisible or informal contributions to the waste management ecosystem.
Examples of climate mitigation initiatives:
So far, much of the global conversation on climate action has been dominated by a focus on mitigation, predominantly in the Global North. It’s been estimated that 92 percent of emissions are the result of actions taken by the richest countries. We found relatively few examples that used collective intelligence methods for mitigation in the Global South. The most common mitigation options among these case studies focused on forest management practices, specifically ecosystem restoration or reduced conversion of forest land, and waste minimization and prevention.
The three most commonly applied collective intelligence use cases we found were:
Below is summary overview of the three climate mitigation areas where most current collective intelligence practice is concentrated, alongside the key methods and climate action gaps that are addressed.
IPCC mitigation categories enabled by collective intelligence | Collective intelligence methods being used | Main climate action gaps being addressed |
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Ecosystems restoration, reforestation, afforestation / Reduced conversion of forests and other ecosystems | Crowdsourcing and remote sensing for forest protection |
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Microtasking and digital tools to scale collective action |
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Combining sensor data and microtasking for intelligent networked actions |
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Waste minimisation, reduction and management | Crowdsourcing and combining datasets to monitor global waste |
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Remote sensing and citizen science to manage marine litter |
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Citizen generated data and coordinated actions to manage urban waste |
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1 23 case studies out of 106 analyzed.
2 Although activity in these areas has a direct impact on the reduction of carbon emissions, they also have clear complementarity to adaptation actions described in the previous section. For example, waste management practices are often coupled with localized disaster risk reduction activity while localized ecosystem restoration projects are often implemented alongside biodiversity management adaptation.
3 We have grouped Ecosystems restoration, reforestation, afforestation and Reduced conversion of forests and other ecosystems together, as forest-based initiatives often make contributions to both of these IPCC categories.