The Geoversiv Foundation is a nonprofit charitable foundation, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Foundation exists to support, connect and empower innovative projects oriented toward achieving social good, through promotion of:
- climate solutions,
- clean energy innovation and deployment,
- responsible enterprise,
- education,
- peacebuilding, and
- expansion of the civic space.
Knowledge can and should do heroic work. Hope is a commitment to connect action to consequence. We are committed to making sure our programs align with these principles, while empowering people to make more good possible.
Embracing complexity: To do this, we aim to leverage the Cross-Pollination Effect—whereby new additional insights emerge from interaction, collaboration, nonlinear generative reframing of distinct areas of knowledge, accidental discovery and invention—so there is overlap between and among our programs. We take care to ensure that such overlap is always constructive, catalytic, and in line with our partners’ and stakeholders’ aims and interests.
Programs & Initiatives
ACCESS to GOOD
Actionable insight, through dialogue and network-building, toward the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.
- The Acceleration Dialogues
- Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network
- The Peace Synapse: Climate Security Knowledge Graph
- Resilience Intel: Climate-Smart Finance Aggregator
Geoversiv News
Working to expand the flow of high-value, well-founded information, to empower critical thinking and a more engaged civics.
- Earthintel.org
- Earth Intelligence podcast
- Geoversiv Films (2023)
- Global Status Update (event)
- The Ocean Neutrality Brief
- The Signals Brief
Living Future Strategies
Critical path-mapping efforts, based on science, exploration, collaborative innovation, and future-visioning projects.
- Council of Scientific Advisors (2023)
- Fellows Program (2023)
- Networked Earth-systems Science Initiative
- Ocean Neutrality Initiative
- Viva Vieques (concept)
Geoversiv Programs and Initiatives are listed below in alphabetical order, not in order of prominence, importance, or chronological starting point. Some are still in design and development stage. Each is outlined in brief, with links to relevant websites and materials. They are presented here as an integrated landscape of action toward our 6 focus areas.
Acceleration Dialogues
Accelerating Progress, Advancing Innovation is a series of Track II diplomatic dialogues co-convened by Citizens’ Climate Education and the International Centre for Dialogue and Peacebuilding, in collaboration with the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Geoversiv provides logistical and technical support to sustain and build on the Dialogues’ outcomes and partnerships, including Resilience Intel.
ACCESS to GOOD
The ACCESS to GOOD Project is a process of partnership for the sustained promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals, as envisioned under SDG17. It brings together two unique Geoversiv areas of inquiry:
- ACCESS to track global progress on action toward the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement.
- GOOD to track progress on building sustainable generative economic value at the human scale.
It is both an analytical reporting effort and a convening space for stakeholders, and all other areas of Geoversiv work connect back to its multilevel multilateral engagement across many interconnected fields of interest.
Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network
The Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network is the main work product of the Pathway to Paris project, of Citizens’ Climate Lobby. It is a global organizing methodology and multilateral coalition of support for engaging even non-expert citizen stakeholders in supranational climate policy negotiations. Geoversiv supports the CCEN and its initiatives, by maintaining platforms for focused communication and ongoing coordination.
The Engage4Climate Toolkit is the flagship work product of the CCEN. Geoversiv supports Toolkit implementation by assisting in communications work and providing insight on lessons learned and potential high-value improvements for the engagement process. Geoversiv also supports Citizens’ Climate International in its stewardship of the Engage4Climate process.
Council of Scientific Advisors
The Geoversiv Foundation was created to ensure best-quality science and technical innovation are made available to the widest possible number of people, with unwavering reliability. In support of that goal, we are working to establish a rotating Council of Scientific Advisors, who will serve as a global panel of experts advising Geoversiv, partners, and government on the latest challenge areas and new discoveries in advanced scientific inquiry.
The Council will provide regular input and guidance, and will produce an annual report regarding major issues, emerging themes, and critical evidence for future scenario planning.
Geoversiv Films
Geoversiv Films will, over time, become its own documentary production studio, focusing on short, medium, and feature-length stories, and delivering planetary resilience news according to strict journalistic standards. The first Geoversiv Films productions will go online in early 2018, as we begin a weekly program of issue-illuminating short videos or micro-documentaries.
Global Status Update
The Geoversiv Global Status Update is an annual event, where the Foundation, its partners and collaborators, special rapporteurs for the six focus areas, and the Council of Scientific Advisors will provide new insight as to the state of the world in relation to achieving an ecologically integral, resilient economic standard that aligns with Earth’s natural life-support systems. The first Global Status Update was held on Monday, April 24, 2017, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
Living Future Strategies
Living Future Strategies are critical pathway planning projects aimed at allowing us to act more efficiently in the world and to prosper while reducing the harm we cause to the complex ecological systems that support and sustain life. The three main Geoversiv variations on critical pathways planning are:
- Tracing Macrocritical Economic Trends,
- Mapping Generative Future Priorities, and
- Redesigning Future Operational Value.
NESSI / N-SIGHT
The Networked Earth Systems Science Initiative is a coalition effort, founded by Geoversiv, the Boldly Go Institute, and Madison River Group, after the Dawn of Private Space Science Symposium, which was held in June 2017 at Columbia University. This effort, still under a working title, will go live in 2018 with a first round of pilot projects aimed at providing local decision-support.
The Ocean Neutrality Initiative
The Ocean Neutrality Initiative (ONI) emerges from the Geoversiv voluntary Commitment to Ocean Stewardship, which was launched during the UN Ocean Conference, in June 2017. As a process of exploration and discovery, the ONI aims to establish a working definition of Ocean Neutrality and to map critical pathways to achieving ecological non-interference in 10 major areas of human-ocean interaction.
The Peace Synapse
The Peace Synapse is a climate security deep graphing initiative that traces knowledge relationships between individuals, institutions, crisis situations and response scenarios. It is being designed to evolve at all times, generate dynamic interactive networked infographics, and provide insight into how we can make climate security planning smarter, more efficient, and more collaborative.
Resilience Intel
Resilience Intel is the first comprehensive climate-smart finance aggregator, working through a coalition of political and practitioner partners to identify, track, grade and upgrade the climate intelligence of money across the whole economy. It emerges from the Acceleration Dialogues and aims to simplify the mainstreaming of climate priorities in financial decision-making by making visible the vast opportunity for rapid scaling up of micro-scale climate-smart investments, at all levels.
On Partnerships: The Geoversiv Foundation works with partners in order to ensure optimal technical support, convening, coordination, and communication of its programs’ aims and outcomes. We do not claim other organizations’ core programs as our own, and we do not endorse all statements, positions, policy preferences, or program elements of organizations with which we partner in pursuit of our in-house and shared programs.
Fiscal Administration: The International Centre for Dialogue and Peacebuilding (ICDP) provides administrative and fiscal services to the Geoversiv Foundation and receives and manages tax-deductible donations to Geoversiv, under ICDP’s 501(c)3 nonprofit status in the United States.
For more information: Please send any inquiries, partnership requests, or recommendations to Foundation management through this webform.
Founder
Joseph is Executive Director of Citizens’ Climate International. He is the lead strategist supporting the Acceleration Dialogues (diplomatic climate-solutions roundtables) and Resilience Intel—an effort to move the world to 100% climate-smart finance. Joseph represents Citizens’ Climate in the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, the UNFCCC negotiations, and other UN processes, and is founder of Geoversiv. His articles appear from time to time in the Guardian. He served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission from April through November 2020. He is a senior advisor to EAT for sustainable finance and is a member of the Secretariat for the Good Food Finance Network. He is a lead contributor to the Earth Intelligence podcast.
He publishes a free newsletter at LivingFutures.net
Core Team
The Geoversiv Foundation’s Core Team of Senior Advisors are working in many ways to explore the dynamic systems that make Earth habitable, connect people and ideas, and foster the deployment of serious and scalable solutions. Learn more about the Core Team here.
The featured image at the top of this page is a study in perspectives and topography, and a reference to the article “Zero-sum thinking doesn’t work“, the title of which is a core mission element of all Geoversiv work.
Geoversiv Earth Intelligence 