Thriving Earth Exchange: A Grand Challenge for Community Science

Some examples of completed TEX projects include:

• Long Island’s coastal communities have become increasingly vulnerable to flooding and erosion as the climate changes. The Living Shoreline project restored wetland habitat that serves as flood protection and a nature preserve.
• Volcanic rock mining in Clark County, WA sends asbestos-like dust into area homes, increasing respiratory, cardiovascular, and cancer risks. AGU scientists helped the community learn to mitigate risk exposure and bring its needs to the forefront of policy- and decision-making.
• Farmers and herders in Afghanistan's Pamir Mountains have used calendars based on historical climate cues for centuries. But climate change had reduced their accuracy, leading to reduced food production. TEX in partnership with MIT’s Climate Colab used both traditional and scientific knowledge to adapt the calendars, making them again useful tools to enhance food security and overall resilience.

To stand up the TEX initiative, AGU appointed a separate advisory board reporting to the AGU board. Champions are key to successful Grand Challenges: AGU populated the TEX advisory board with catalysts drawn from past board members who brought backgrounds in private sector industries, universities, and US governmental agencies. 

AGU contracted with a sister organization, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, for the services of a facilitator, which allowed TEX to begin its work without committing to hiring an employee. Raj Pandya took on the task. 

In its first phase, the TEX team operated as a “Skunkworks”—a startup empowered to make its own decisions, develop pilot projects and partnerships, and evolve based on what it learned. The team quickly learned that solutions alone weren’t enough. Communities didn't want disembodied experts telling them what they should do. Pandya said, “We realized that instead of our Grand Challenge being about a solution, it had to be about relationships that enabled solutions.” In other words, activating an ecosystem. 

Chris brought me in as the project was being conceived, and I stayed involved through its startup. We were able to build relationships inside stakeholders’ networks that led to solution development. “Seth accelerates progress in societal Grand Challenges by creating networks of groups and uniting them behind shared goals,” she said. 

The first handful of pilot projects inspired a careful process of one-on-one project scoping that would allow TEX to scale.  A Project Launch Workshop model developed by Pandya and the strategy team became the template for bringing together communities and scientists for a day to explore community priorities and scope local science projects. 

Over time, TEX brought together numerous partners to support more communities and spread the word about the impact of community-based science.  Among these are the National Council for Science and the Environment, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the National League of Cities, and The New Advisory Group. (All partner organizations are listed on the TEX website.) TEX continues to evolve as it builds a social movement for community science, based on an ecosystem of interrelated networks. Said Pandya, “Every time we think we’re getting good at what we're doing, we realize it was good enough to get us where we are but not good enough to take us forward.”