PROGRAM AREA: FIGHTING FALSE SOLUTIONS
Stopping techno-fixes and securing precautionary assessment, regulation and oversight
While technologies now being developed and commercialized may result in useful applications, they can also have serious negative social, environmental, economic and political impacts.
Emerging technologies must therefore be subject to precautionary assessment, regulation and oversight – especially those that are fast tracked and marketed as “techno-fixes” or “green” panaceas to climate change and other crises, as they are often false solutions that perpetuate harmful systems.
Focus
CS Fund focuses on three emerging and converging technologies.
Geoengineering - Intentional, large-scale climate manipulation through a range of methods, including Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management.
Synthetic Biology - The design, manufacture and release of artificially created DNA, including gene drives that force genetically engineered traits through populations for either conservation or agricultural purposes.
Nanotechnology - The creation and commodification of tiny bits of matter (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter), especially in consumer products, which presents novel toxicity risks to human health and the environment.
PROBLEM
Intertwining environmental, economic and health crises are now threatening all life on this planet.
While many technologies can and should contribute to improving public and environmental health and to securing human, social, and economic rights, they can also have known, unknown and unknowable consequences, some of which may be catastrophic.
The context within which new technologies are designed today is the emerging 4th Industrial Revolution – characterized by the blurring of lines between the physical, biological and digital spheres. The 4th IR encourages unprecedented concentration of wealth and privatization of resources; externalizes costs onto human societies and the ecosystems that sustain us; and debases the social values and norms that knit together communities, commons, and public welfare.
Historically unprecedented changes are visible on or just over the horizon. Our current moment of unprecedented environmental and social decline will only make unproven techno-fixes more attractive to governments and power centers that seek to avoid disrupting the unsustainable status quo.
Mission
To protect biodiversity, ecosystem health and social equity by establishing the precautionary principle as an essential standard in the development, commercialization and oversight of emerging technologies, and by ensuring meaningful public participation in assessment and governance of emerging technologies.
Vision
Precaution is a primary driver in the development and deployment of emerging technologies. Proponents of these technologies are responsible for assessing and demonstrating their safety for human societies and ecosystems.
The full costs of emerging technologies and the uses to which they are put are publicly assessed and consented to – particularly by those most likely to be negatively affected – to ensure equitable sharing of risks and benefits.
Political and economic changes reorient industrial societies away from incentivizing profit-driven techno-fixes, and toward real solutions that are socially inclusive, require lower energy inputs, and are supportive of ecological and cultural diversity.
Scope
This program makes grants in the US and internationally.
Current Grants
Program Areas
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Food Sovereignty
Building capacity and power in Indigenous communities, communities of color, and social movements
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Just Transitions
Building intersectional, community-level social and ecological justice
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Rights and Governance
Protecting and advancing civil rights and liberties, justice and equity, and democracy