Project Drawdown

LOCATION: Sausalito, California, USA

SUMMARY: Project Drawdown is a visionary initiative comprised of 200+ individuals and institutions from across the globe, specializing in a wide range of disciplines, but all working in a coalition to research and analyze 100+ “state-of-the-state” climate solutions, whose uptake would ensure that humanity could actually draw down the excessive CO2 and other greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. The Drawdown research seeks to reframe the issue by insightfully and elegantly quantifying and articulating the beneficial financial, ecological and social impacts that each technology could deliver over the next thirty years. The results will be conveyed through an internationally released book (40 countries in 12+ languages) and an interactive platform and companion open-source database (to which new data and research can be added and adapted to each locality and target audience, from CEOs to schoolchildren), both slated to be available before the UN Climate Talks in Paris in December 2015. The database and platform will allow users anywhere to interact directly with the data; adapt the models and projections to customized local climate strategies; and create meaningful measurement methods and policy tools. The global coalition will also conduct workshops, hackathons, lectures, and other events to present the findings of Project Drawdown to a global audience and invite participants to offer feedback and ideas as part of an ongoing dialog and refinement process. This is an innovative attempt to not only inform, but to catalyze large-scale action in partnership with a global citizenry around practical, feasible solutions to the climate crisis.

PROBLEM SPACE: “Will climate change hasten our demise or create a transformation in thinking, innovation and action? Climate change is the great trim tab of our time. Properly framed, it can be the means to create a more just and equitable world.

Climate research has been focused primarily on communicating the looming impacts of the business-as-usual path: worldwide ecological, political, economic and food insecurity, particularly for the most marginalized and historically oppressed people.

We need a new goal: Drawdown is the point at which concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere peak and begin to decline on a year-to-year basis. The current conversation does not include “drawdown’s”” but rather is focused on stabilization at 450 or 500 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. Stabilization won’t help us if we are to attain a prosperous and healthy world. The goal of the climate movement needs to be drawdown.

Seeing the cumulative impact of solutions that delineate the path to drawdown is a shift away from the doom, gloom and guilt that pervades climate communications. Project Drawdown inspires a shift from climate fatalism to a climate-inspired renaissance.”

SOLUTION: “Project Drawdown is a global initiative comprised of over 200 individuals and institutions working in coalition to research and analyze 100+ …””state-of-the-shelf”” climate solutions. The research will quantify and explain the beneficial financial, ecological and social impact that they will deliver over the next thirty years, assuming vigorous increases in their adoption. We measure the financial implications (cost and net savings over a thirty year period), greenhouse gas impacts (gigaton reductions and ppm concentrations), as well as data on jobs, human health, and ecosystems impacts.

Presenting the results through an international book, interactive platform and companion open-source database will enable myriad other groups to use and act on our work — to add new data and research, adapt it to their locality, and remix it to make it accessible to their core audiences e.g. for policy tools, investment vehicles, curriculum, games, employee engagement tools, and more.

To accomplish this seminal task, we have assembled a coalition of best-in-class researchers and leaders from a wide variety of disciplines and geographies who are researching and validating the path to drawdown.

An initial publication of the book and online platform will be available before the UN Climate Talks in Paris in December 2015.”

CONTACT: [email protected]