Knowledge Commons
Knowledge-In-Practice
A major challenge facing the climate movement is the knowledge-action gap. It would be a mistake to separate from knowledge commons either practical knowledge or knowledge embodied in practice. Taken together, such collective action, or mass climate action, is the practical realization of climate knowledge commons relative to this essential purpose.
In Red Alert, Dr Wildcat describes how Indigenous ingenuity or indigenuity addresses this dilemma:
The ability to solve pressing life issues facing humankind now by situating our solutions in Earth-based local Indigenous deep spatial knowledges of tribal peoples - constitutes a practical merger of knowing with doing. Their lifeways embody knowing as doing... an ability to work with what they have available and the wisdom to ensure, such as they can, that they can continue doing it.
Conversely, what "Western" society lacks but so desperately needs is "practical knowledge about living well brought about by a lifetime of attentiveness to something other than our own human-produced culture."[1]
Ultimately, this approach aligns with adopting the most advanced complexity models of experimental science concerning the current situation of global burning or climate collapse:
By doing so, we might move away from thinking about a single solution for the problem we face and toward thinking about our participating in an emerging world where we do not wring our hands and fail to act, but act even in little ways, in personal choices, to contribute to emerging systems - in other words, societal properties - that might slow the accelerating decline in the diversity of life we are now witnessing.[2]
Scaling Climate Goals
On April 22, 2022 the T7 Task Force Climate and Environment advocated for a “Digital Technical Knowledge Commons” ‘housing all things technical’ and data, especially:
1. monitoring data;
2. contextualized technology-based solutions, and;
3. best practices, relevant to climate change-related goals and sharing this accessible technical knowledge, information and expertise with decision-makers and stakeholders locally, regionally, and globally.[3]
While this report showed a recognition of the need for a climate knowledge commons by an official international task-force with considerable influence, it failed to address any social factors or even recognize, let alone center, the issue of climate justice - a major difference from the emphasis and design of Climate Wiki.
Sources
- ↑ Daniel R Wildcat, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, 2009, p. 48
- ↑ Daniel R Wildcat, Red Alert: Saving the Planet with Indigenous Knowledge, 2009, p. 54
- ↑ "SCALING CLIMATE GOALS THROUGH THE USE OF TECHNICAL EXPERTS & DIGITAL TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE COMMONS" T7 Task Force Climate and Environment, Maike Luiken & Alpesh Shah, April 22, 2022 https://www.think7.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Climate_Scaling-Climate-Goals-through-the-use-of-technical-experts-Digital-technical-knowledge-commons_Luken_Shah.pdf