Solutions to the climate emergency have unique social and environmental effects, positive and negative. Just as important as what solution is being implemented are the details on how an initiative is done, who is consulted, and what values are prioritized. To develop a broader understanding of the solutions in Nexus, we rate each on five criteria:
- Social Justice: The main principles of social justice are access to resources, equity, participation, diversity, and human rights. Social Justice rating criteria evaluate impacts related to job creation, political empowerment, education, and participation of marginalized or minority groups.
- Culture: This criteria evaluates effects on local culture and traditional or indigenous lifeways, assessing impacts on practices such as traditional construction, crafts, hunting, gathering or cultivating food, and cultural identity and self-determination.
- Women: This criteria assesses impacts on gender equality, which means equity related to women's rights, responsibilities, the workplace, fertility, social status, and opportunities.
- Biodiversity: This criteria assesses impacts on ecosystem diversity, the number and variety of species in a given area. High and/or expanding levels of biodiversity are considered synonymous with ecosystem health and resilience.
- Carbon: This assesses the potential carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 and methane) avoided if a solution is deployed at scale.
Sources for each Nexus are graded numerically (-3 through 10), and the average is displayed as a letter grade. You can explore each source in depth by clicking on the title of any Nexus Solution below. You can toggle between two views and order solutions by any of their five criteria or alphabetically.
These ratings are approximations based on informed assumptions from the available data. Although the atmosphere is global, there are no global solutions. All solutions are place-based. We aim for this research to invite a holistic perspective on regenerative solutions to the planetary crisis.