Michal Nachmany, founder and CEO of environmental nonprofit Climate Policy Radar, believes real climate solutions can only be achieved by changing behavior and developing technology. He says that is not enough. “A lot of it is policy,” she says.
We need better laws, policies and regulations, she argues, and we need to hold policymakers and corporations accountable because they aren't doing a good enough job. The problem is that understanding what policies exist, what works, and what doesn't can be a daunting task. Therefore, the goal of Climate Policy Radar is to use AI to understand the vast climate policy space and help ensure that future laws and policies are evidence-based.
“We have assembled all the climate change laws, policies, strategies and action plans that every government in the world has on their books,” she explains. “She has 470,000 pages in there, which means she has 4.5 million paragraphs.”
Analyzing these using general language AI systems is not enough, Nachmany says. “They get unreliable data sources, they do hallucinations, they do all sorts of things that we really don't want to bring into decision-making,” she says. “So we use augmented intelligence and use human expertise to teach machines.”
As a nonprofit organization, Climate Policy Radar provides constantly updated data for free and has a community of practitioners who can work with decision makers and those who seek to influence them. I am.
“The people who need data the most are the ones who can least afford it,” she says. “So there's a very strong climate justice component to this.” She invites anyone who wants to collaborate to get in touch. “We are only at the beginning of the journey.”
This article appears in the March/April 2024 issue of WIRED UK magazine.
