How collective intelligence can close five climate action gaps

How Collective Intelligence can close five climate action gaps

How collective intelligence can close them

Our case study review surfaced examples of practice across a spread of issues and geographies. Across the wide variety of methods and specific applications observed, there is a common thread about collective intelligence approaches helping to close current gaps in climate action. Below, we introduce these gaps and how collective intelligence initiatives close them, or have the potential to close them, by combining people, data and technology in new ways.

The Data Gap

The environmental and climate monitoring challenge is vast, and data gaps are still a barrier to effective action. Collective intelligence approaches are addressing this by mobilizing citizens to generate real-time localized data, and bringing together data sets to uncover new insights.

The Doing Gap

The IPCC has made clear that closing the gap between words and action on climate is imperative. Collective intelligence approaches enabled by new digital technologies are getting more people involved in taking climate action, and helping people monitor the follow-through of institutions.

The Diversity Gap

It is often the most marginalized groups who are most affected by climate change, yet they are frequently excluded from decision-making. Collective intelligence initiatives are starting to address this, by bringing a wider range of people and perspectives into climate processes and data collection, including Indigenous communities.

The Distance Gap

Addressing the gap between scientific knowledge and public understanding is critical in building public support for policies, tackling misinformation, and making sure that scientists’ research builds on local knowledge and addresses local needs. Collective intelligence initiatives foster a two-way exchange between scientists and local communities - enhancing scientific understanding and public knowledge, as well as creating mutual trust.

The Decision-Making Gap

Taking effective climate action relies on being able to navigate between conflicting viewpoints, values and beliefs. The difficulty of closing gaps between opposing views and interests continues to be a major barrier to the scale and speed of climate action that is needed. Collective intelligence initiatives can help to do this by soliciting contributions from a diverse range of people, creating collective understanding of a problem, and supporting decision-making processes through structured deliberation. However, we found few examples of these approaches being applied in the Global South.