Call for Proposals – MTF: AI and Environmental Justice Awards

This year, the Mozilla Technology Fund seeks to fund open source projects at the intersection of environmental justice and AI which are making a positive impact in ecosystems and human communities.

Mozilla is interested in convening technical projects that have a firm grounding in environmental and climate justice, sustainability, and ecology. We understand that the effects of climate change will be felt disproportionately by the global south, especially people of color, indigenous and traditional peoples, local communities, and specific ethnic-racial groups. We are particularly interested in projects which can address the health, economic and social impacts of climate change on these groups (e.g. the Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA)) and which are built by these groups or in close partnership with affected communities.

Generally, the Mozilla Technology Fund supports open source projects which already have some momentum: a working prototype, a community of contributors and a user base. Given the early stage of research in the AI + environmental justice space, for this round of funding, we are also willing to consider earlier-stage and more experimental projects, provided they will be built by a team with a past track record of success.

Some categories of projects we are interested in funding during this round:

• Projects which expose or mitigate the climate impacts of AI systems
• Projects which utilize AI to conduct environmental impact assessments
• Projects that prototype Grassroots AI systems for ecological management
• Projects which combat climate disinformation

The Mozilla Technology Fund will provide awards of up to $50,000 each and one year of mentorship and support to open source projects which meet the criteria listed below. Our goal is to provide projects in the MTF: AI and Environmental Justice cohort with the resources needed to unlock their full potential and to make them more sustainable in the long term.

What are we looking for?

We imagine that the MTF: AI and Environmental Justice Awards will support a variety of hardware and software projects (including utilities and frameworks), datasets, tools, and design concepts. We will not consider applications for policy or research projects (though software projects which leverage, support, or amplify policy and research initiatives will be considered—for example, software which is built to support an ecological study that can be leveraged by other researchers).

All applicants should:

• Have a product or working prototype in hand (we will also consider projects at the idea stage if the project team can demonstrate a track record of success in launching and building community around similar projects in the past)
• Already have a core team in place to support the development of the project (this team might include software developers working in close collaboration with ecologists, AI researchers, designers, product/project managers, and subject matter experts)
• Embrace openness, transparency, and community stewardship as methodology
• Make their work available under an open-source license

These awards are open to all applicants regardless of geographic location or institutional affiliation, except where legally prohibited. However, Mozilla is especially interested in receiving applications from Most Affected People and Areas (MAPA); members of the Global Majority or Global South; ​​Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color; women, transgender, non-binary, and/or gender-diverse applicants; migrant and diasporic communities; and/or persons coming from climate displaced/impacted communities, etc. We strongly encourage all such applicants to apply.