As coral reefs rapidly die in warming waters, new biotechnologies are racing to save them — from probiotics to gene-edited corals. But most never leave the lab. Without ways to partner with the communities who permit and steward reef ecosystems, critical interventions stall before they reach the ocean.
With the MIT Media Lab’s Community Biotechnology Initiative, we developed a Sociotechnical Toolkit for listening, mapping relationships, and organizing collective action in conservation. To share these methods broadly, we built Growing Community Power — a Webflow site that makes the tools accessible to the scientific community and adaptable for real-world use. More than a manual, it’s a resource for integrating trust-building into research and deployment.
Growing Community Power will launch online in winter 2025, offering scientists an open-access platform for applying these methods in their own work. Field deployment begins in Jamaica and Micronesia in 2026, with continued development through the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA) to link local practice with global governance.
Annie Chen, Zoe Lee, David S. Kong, Zion Michael
