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Finalists of MIT Sloan's 2011 Climate CoLab Contest announced

"The first Climate CoLab contest in 2010 proved that it is possible to elicit innovative ideas about what to do concerning climate change from a surprisingly wide range of people," says MIT Sloan Professor Thomas Malone, director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, which leads the Climate CoLab. "We're continuing the contest because we believe we've just barely scratched the surface of what's possible with this approach to finding climate change solutions."

This year's contest focused on the green economy, a key theme at the upcoming United Nations Rio+20 Conference. The contest solicited proposals on both the global and national level, and more than 60 entries were submitted to the Climate CoLab from teams in Canada, India, Mexico, Kenya, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S.

"The contest is clearly growing, as we received a much bigger range of interesting proposals this year from a more diverse set of participants all over the planet," observes Malone, noting that one entry was a combination of ideas from last year's winners.

Research scientist Robert Laubacher, who manages the Climate CoLab team and is associate director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, agrees that this year's contest is more "robust." He says, "We now have more than 2,100 registered community members and we've had more than 20,000 unique visitors to the Climate CoLab Website from nearly 150 countries. We're gaining traction and encourage anyone interested in this topic to join our community and vote on the finalists' ideas."

In the national category, the six finalists' concepts included connecting university students with farmers in Africa, obtaining funding to provide education and training for green jobs in the U.K., and building a personal rapid transit system in the U.S. In the global category, the six finalists' ideas ranged from using a new type of nuclear technology to changing diets to utilizing algae in a new way.

Voting is open on the finalists' proposals at the Climate CoLab until Nov. 15 when the Judges' Choice and Popular Choice winners will be announced. The CoLab will sponsor one representative from each winning team to present at briefings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. and at the United Nations in New York. The winning proposals will also be featured on TreeHugger.com.

"Our hope is that, if we can harness the collective intelligence of people who are concerned about these issues all over the world, we should be able to come up with better solutions than anything the world would have developed otherwise," says Malone.

Laubacher adds, "This is an opportunity for citizens to grapple with the issues and put their ideas forward to policymakers and for scientists to let people know about their models. With the Climate CoLab we want to improve the flow of knowledge and interaction among all of these groups to help find solutions to climate change."

To learn more about the Climate CoLab, please visit: http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/home

To see the finalists' proposals and vote, please visit: http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans

MIT Sloan School of Management
Paul Denning, 617-253-0576
Director of Media Relations
denning@mit.edu
or
Patricia Favreau, 617-253-3492
Assistant Director of Media Relations
pfavreau@mit.edu