How to Contribute Climate Change Information to Wikipedia

The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) and Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) have launched a new guide for climate change professionals on how to contribute climate change information to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a powerful platform to make climate change information accessible to all. However, people working in the climate change field often overlook Wikipedia as an outreach channel. Researchers typically focus on academic journals, and practitioners often communicate through specialist knowledge portals, publications and mailing lists. However, with more than 20 billion pageviews every month and as one of the most visited websites on the internet, Wikipedia has significantly more reach and impact than any other climate change website or online knowledge portal. Wikipedia can be used to communicate information to a wider and more diverse audience. This guide has been written by communications and knowledge management specialists from CDKN; the Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange (CCKE) unit of FCFA; and Kulima Integrated Development Solutions. Our aim is to show that although editing Wikipedia can seem daunting at first, once you are familiar with the Wikipedia style and editing norms, it is relatively easy to contribute. We outline why, in an era of fake news, Wikipedia is a powerful vehicle for sharing more robust, verified climate change information, and making climate knowledge and the latest scientific findings more freely available to the public. We highlight the significant challenges Wikipedia faces in ensuring diversity both in terms of editors and contributions – with a notable lack of women editors and editors from the Global South. We advocate that more female editors and editors from developing countries are critical to make Wikipedia’s information more relevant, localised and representative of the ‘sum of human knowledge’.