Coordinating Better to Fight Climate Change

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Taking action against climate change has never been more urgent, as the current COP26 (26th United Nations Climate Change Conference) conversations remind us.

If we are to stand a chance at fighting climate change more effectively, we need to harness digital technology to help us as individuals coordinate our collective actions better. For effective coordination, digital human agency (as granted through decentralised data ownership) needs to be combined with digital technology’s ability to coordinate. 

But innovation and market structure gaps prevent us from doing so, a May 2021 virtual hackathon organised by Dataswyft has shown. An analysis of the projects submitted by the end of the 2021 Hack from Home: Decarbonisation event reveals a clear gap at what’s termed the Meso level, which sits between digital human agency and decarbonisation. Key lessons learnt about these gaps facing our world today in affecting climate change has helped catalyse the creation of a structured market environment for decentralised personal data in the form of Data Passporting – a Meso-level institution for personal data portability. 

Read more in the full report: Coordinating for Decarbonisation with Personal Data Ownership: 2021 Hack from Home: Decarbonisation Report. ‍

The 2021 Hack from Home: Decarbonisation was organised by Dataswyft.io, along with its partners the University of East London and the Ethical Tech Alliance, as part of the European-Union funded Eastern New Energy project. The weekend event saw the submission of eight innovative and exciting decarbonisation projects by the end of Sunday, May 16, all aimed at addressing the hackathon’s brief: to explore how decentralised personal data could enable decarbonisation, with a particular focus on Eastern England.