Open Access Climate Models to Help Democratize Climate Change Policy

By Elizabeth Sawin
April 6, 2009

Thanks to Google Earth, citizen leaders around the world have access to satellite images of their local watersheds and forests. And increasingly, they are using the information to monitor the health of these places and to advocate for measures to protect them. Yale e360 has a good recent article on this trend, reporting that:

“Citizens and environmental groups are now using Google Earth to tracks threats to pristine rivers from hydroelectric projects, catalogue endangered species, help indigenous people in the Amazon protect their land, and alert citizens and government officials that boats are illegally fishing off the Canary Islands.”

News like this encourages our vision: that a democratization of access to climate change models could lead to a similar level of engagement and empowerment.

We are thrilled that C-ROADS simulation is finding increasing utility in supporting decision makers, like US Senator John Kerry, and US Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change, Jonathan Pershing.

But we see additional possibilities. Just as satellite information that used to be available only to those with special access is now being used much more widely by ordinary citizens and grassroots leaders, we think the output of climate models, until recently only available to scientists and climate policy makers, could be well used by youth activists, faith leaders, and community leaders, to build understanding, mobilize supporters and study the likely impacts of policy options.

We’re hosting a free webinar about the possibilites. See here for more information.