PROGRAM AREA: FIGHTING FALSE SOLUTIONS
Stopping techno-fixes and advancing community solutions
Emerging technologies can and should be used to improve the health of people and the planet and to advance human rights and social and economic justice.
However, without legitimate civil society engagement and unbiased assessment and oversight, they have the potential to lead to catastrophic – and in some cases – irreversible consequences. Too often these technologies perpetuate extractive and harmful systems, including the fossil fuel industry and industrial agriculture, and prevent a just transition to an equitable and regenerative future.
Mission
To prevent the promotion and adoption of false solutions that perpetuate systems of extraction and exploitation and support real solutions that are rooted in climate justice, food sovereignty, just transitions, community self-determination, and wellbeing.
Vision
Technical solutions that center human and ecosystem wellbeing and are socially inclusive and just are the norm.
Civil society, especially disproportionately impacted communities, determine which emerging technologies are permissible.
The burden of assessing the safety and full cost of emerging technologies are on the institutions that propose them.
Precaution is a foundational standard in the development, assessment, deployment and governance of emerging technologies.
Approach
We address geoengineering and synthetic biology asthe most egregious and risky technologies posited as false solutions to the greatest crises of our time – climate change and threats to food systems and sovereignty.
We also address the convergence of these technologieswith others, including in the realms of Artificial Intelligence and digital agriculture.
These technologies also have disproportionate impacts on land tenure, biodiversity preservation, gender justice, Indigenous sovereignty, cultural knowledge and practices, health, and more.
We recognize that emerging technologies that promise a transition to a green energy future for Global North countries – but are built on the backs of Global South countries – are in fact not a just transition.
We seek to:
Build power to collectively challenge false solutions at grassroots, community, regional and international levels.
Expand and strengthen the ecosystem of organizations limiting harm and advancing precaution in communities and policy spaces
Foment connections across geographies and movements
Advance community self-determination
Geography
This program makes grants in the US and internationally.