Despite the transformative power of free and open-source software (FOSS) across various sectors, its impact on one of the most urgent challenges of our time - environmental preservation - remains largely invisible. In response, the Open Sustainable Technology community has developed a range of strategies to make FOSS an essential factor in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss. The number of possibilities we encountered was both inspiring and surprising, though many are only partially realizable within our current capacity as a community.

This talk marks the beginning of a global series exploring how FOSS can address critical challenges such as traceability, trust, and collaboration, especially concerning the natural commons in both economic and social systems. We’ll discuss the role of FOSS tools in areas like global carbon emission measurement, climate investment, sustainable branding, accountability, carbon offsets, and local government sustainability efforts, offering innovative ideas and strategies to tackle these issues head-on.

In addition, we will demonstrate how FOSS, combined with open science methods, can combat greenwashing in the sustainability sector. By applying open and transparent principles, we will show how these approaches can help ensure that environmental claims are accurate and meaningful. This will be illustrated through a number of projects currently under development worldwide, as well as new ideas that we will present and discuss with the broader FOSS community, inviting collaboration and further development. Finally, we will show why openness is the most important indicator of environmental sustainability and explain this using practical examples.