Today, a group of major international organizations issued a clear call to support action on climate change.

The UN-backed Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), UN’s Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN), the Overseas Development Institute, Climate and Development Knowledge Network and dozens more are backing the launch of the Climate Knowledge Brokers Manifesto, which sets out the key principles for effective exchange and communication of climate information, enabling the global response to a changing climate.

The fate and future of the energy sector are especially intertwined with global climate and environmental trends. “Enabling a transition to clean energy technologies with no to low emissions and concomitant economic and social benefits will be a central pillar of any effort to address climate change,” said Ron Benioff, Director for Multilateral Programs at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy. “This global clean energy transformation requires that all decision makers and stakeholders have timely access to knowledge and evidence on climate science, policies, and markets.”

The renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors in particular are key parts of the solutions to climate change and also offer high economic development potential for countries.

The Climate Knowledge Brokers Manifesto was developed in a collaborative process by the Climate Knowledge Brokers’ Group (CKB). The effort involved interviews with 80 climate change thought leaders (many conducted by Solutions Center representatives) and an editorial conference among the team of authors. The full version of the Manifesto includes an analysis of user needs, characteristics of the climate knowledge broker role in responding to those user needs, and how the CKB improves the effectiveness of climate knowledge brokering through collaboration.

CKB was created in recognition that climate change has growing impacts on people’s daily lives, and will transform local environments the world over for the foreseeable future.

“Only now are we really grasping the full extent to which our lives, our jobs and our environment are being affected by a changing climate,” said Florian Bauer, COO and Open Knowledge Director at the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership in Vienna, and one of the editors of the Manifesto. “But while our knowledge is technically growing, our ability to process and make use of it is not.”

On 1 October, the Solutions Center is partnering with CKB to host a webinar on the Manifesto. In addition, a short pamphlet version of the Manifesto, together with a longer book version, can be downloaded from manifesto.climateknowledgebrokers.net.