How do world changing ideas get amplified? An innovative approach has been undertaken by a group at MIT’s Climate Co-Lab, in the Centre for Collective Intelligence, using crowdsourced proposals to identify best ways to enable adaptation to the projected impacts of climate change. The tools? An idea and the internet. Using concepts of competition, interaction and crowdsourcing, three distinct challenges on adaptation have been issued to people from all over the world. These are:
- Enabling adaptation; exploring innovative institutional, educational and financial and other means to increase global preparedness to climate change.
- Adaptation and civil society groups; elaborating on the ways civil society actors can support or mobilize action on climate adaptation.
- Urban adaptation: asking for the most effective ways that city governments can adapt to projected climate impacts.
The grand prize is $10,000, however the goal is far more compelling. It is to crowdsource internationally relevant proposals that accelerate humanity’s adaptation to a climate change. The CoLab website facilitates interactive exchange, encouraging people to comment on proposals. The idea is to engage a broad range of scientists, policymaker, investors and business people and concerned citizens, “in order to develop, and gain support for, climate change plans that are better than any that would have otherwise been developed”.