Locations
Monitoring climate action and inaction
Monitoring climate action and inaction
Emissions reductions are not on track to reach targets by 2030. This is a good example of a substantial decision-making gap where international commitments are not taken seriously, particularly in the Global North. The OECD’s 2021 Trust survey showed low public confidence in the ability of governments to address global challenges such as climate change. This, alongside poor perception of government integrity and dissatisfaction with the lack of participatory or representative opportunities are all contributing to the growing mistrust between institutions and the public. Data is an important tool for civil society to hold governments and industry to account. Several emerging collective intelligence methods in this space are starting to generate new evidence about gaps between public commitments and government or industry action.
How might collective intelligence help close decision-making gaps through social accountability?
Social media platforms are increasingly used as interfaces for citizen reporting of environmental violations directly to regulators and companies. For example, a randomized trial in China invited volunteers to use social media platforms to monitor and report on environmental pollution by industry. Over a period of eight months they logged more than 3,000 violations on governmental social media channels. They showed that public complaints made via social media were more likely to lead to regulatory enforcement than private complaints, particularly when posts received a lot of attention from members of the public.
Triangulating between data sources can also be an effective method for identifying environmental violations, particularly if remote sensing data requires on-the-ground verification. In India, the UNDP Accelerator Lab experimented with combining satellite data, crowd labeling and citizen-generated reports about working conditions to identify brick kiln factories that are failing to comply with environmental legislation to regulate emissions.