Open Climate

Interested in knowing who we are? Read more about us! In a nutshell: we are a group of colleagues from the open technology & knowledge movement who felt the pressing need to address the missing opportunities for collaboration in climate action. That's why we started the Open Climate calls. Check out our Season 1 of calls.

For 2022 our plan is to expand on these initial debates, but also bring them to concrete action through workshops and public seminars. So, we would like to invite you all to come along!

Here are some of the things to expect for 2022:

• "Season Two" of our “Open Climate Community Calls.” See below for information on dates and as speakers and facilitators are added to the list. Interested in giving a talk or facilitating a call? Reach out to us via the Open Climate talk page.
• In March 2022, we’ll be hosting an Open Climate party to help bring more people to work with us at the intersection of the planetary and the digital commons!
• We’ll be piloting a model for community workshops as well. If you have a question that you think members of the open movement could help solve (e.g. how do we open data used in the IPCC reports?) and are interested in convening a workshop, please reach out.
• We are drafting the syllabus for a public seminar on the question of the planetary and digital commons. Our seminar will be open to the public and will have a hybrid format (something between a MOOC and a discussion group), so it can be taken as a course for those who are interested in diving deep into the literature on the commons.

Fellowship

In 2023, we had our first fellow cohort connecting practitioners and communities in Mexico, Nigeria, Argentina, Chile, the Bahamas, Germany and the Philippines.

Since our first community call, Open Climate has hosted conversations with people who bring insights about how open practices can strengthen climate action. Over the course of 12 community calls, we identified five issues where the open movement could become a key actor to pursue a sustainable future:

1. Our information environment is polluted by companies and governments who deny or delay climate action. This can be countered by a robust knowledge commons.
2. Openness can help address the environmental impact of digital infrastructures.
3. Downscale climate science to local levels and work for the “smallest possible policy-maker.”
4. Freeing access to climate information can be done by growing the socio-technical capacity of community spaces.
5. The open movement is a cultural movement in principle, and it can offer value to other movements by operating intersectionally.

You can read more about these issues on Branch Magazine and the Climate Justice & the Knowledge Commons report.

Other resources and events

List of articles, event recordings and other resources created by Open Climate:

• Open Climate Medium
• Community call notes
• Article: Open Climate Now!
• Article: Open questions in a warming world
• Panel: Open Climate conversation for the radical climate justice for the global commons conference
• Commons seminar (Fall 2023)