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Commissioned by Mozilla, Ariadne Network and the Ford Foundation, Open Environmental Data Project and Open Climate collaborated on two issue briefs for digital rights funders, “Climate Justice and the Knowledge Commons: Opportunity for the digital rights space” and “Environmental Justice, Climate Justice and the Space and Digital Rights.” Authored in January 2022 by Shannon Dosemagen, Evelin Heidel, Katie Hoeberling, and Emelia Williams, these issue briefs have been compressed and shortened for inclusion in Branch Magazine. Read the full briefs and associated briefs.
Climate crisis impacts are affecting every aspect of society. Areas that people previously treated as disconnected from the climate crisis are now being linked. Technology, the Internet, and other digital spaces are no exception. Climate misinformation that spreads online, surveillance tools that are used on climate activists and patents prevent climate change technology transfer. These are all issues worsened by the climate crisis. Fortunately, there is growing awareness of these connections. This analyzes how the impacts of the climate crisis disproportionately affect those least responsible for the crisis. These communities affected have limited resources and power to mitigate or adapt to a climate in crisis.
If we are to address the worst impacts of the climate crisis and protect the most vulnerable communities, more must be done to connect previously siloed work. To this end, we recently wrote two briefs on the intersections of digital rights, environmental justice, climate justice, and the open movement.
Our first brief situates the related but distinct movements for environmental justice and climate justice, and identifies commonalities between these and digital rights work. The second focuses on how openness and the knowledge commons can support collaborative work in climate justice and digital rights spaces. While these briefs, summarized below, are part of a larger research project meant to inform funding strategies in the digital rights space, our findings and recommendations are relevant to anyone interested in bringing these movements together.
A Shared and Precise Lexicon around Environmental and Climate Justice
Climate justice and environmental justice are often used interchangeably, and while they share commonalities, their respective histories, strategies, and principles set them apart in distinct ways that affect their intersection with digital rights. Environmental justice, closely tied with the US civil rights movement, connects the rights-based struggle against racism and discrimination to pollution’s uneven distribution. Climate justice, on the other hand, is best described as a loose merger between the environmental justice movement, the anti-corporate globalization movement, and the work of international NGOs involved in UN climate talks. It is rooted in the idea that the historical responsibility for climate crisis lies with the wealthy and powerful, yet disproportionately impacts the poorest and most vulnerable. Not all environmental justice communities organize around climate crisis’s direct effects, and not all communities vulnerable to climate crisis suffer from environmental injustice in equal ways.
The Knowledge Commons
Digital rights activists are no strangers to the concept and promise of open—the open source movement has roots in the early days of the Internet after all. In recent years, however, the consolidation of power by a few large tech companies has threatened important work to build the knowledge commons. These commons can be thought of as information and other intellectual goods collectively held and managed by community norms on the Internet and elsewhere. They often include data, software, hardware, publications, and information communicated through other formats.
The knowledge commons presents a powerful and untapped opportunity for digital rights groups and climate activists to collaborate more closely and openly, to learn from each other, and to build consensus on shared values and priorities. The openness inherent in these spaces can not only strengthen trust between diverse groups, but also support more robust participation by disenfranchised communities in science, policy, and organizing.