1 What does the CosmoPolitical Cooperative mean by a "trustworthy" document?
We consider as a "trustworthy" document any one of the following:
- a report published by an official, preferably international, institution, such as the United Nations (e.g. the United Nations Environmental Programme - UNEP, the UNFCCC, the Food and Agriculture Organisation - FAO), or the European Commission, should it be written by its staff or by an external consultancy or academic organisation;
- a scientific article published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal (consider looking at a citation index to check how much the journal is cited by peers, and hence how serious it is);
- a report published by a reputable NGO with transparent methodologies;
- an article published by a scientist e.g. on The Conversation.
2 Why does the CosmoPolitical Cooperative translate trustworthy documents?
2.1 Single-language documents are unfair to non native speakers
Many interesting and trustworthy documents are published in one language only, most often English. This makes the reading difficult or impossible for those who do not master that language. In that case, the intrinsic complexity of the text and of the underlying reasoning is compound by the linguistic barrier. This is very unfair: everyone should have access to these interesting and trustworthy documents, whatever his/her native language is.
2.2 Within the CosmoPolitical Community
Having access to interesting and trustworthy documents in the languages or the members of our Community supports an informed and respectful discussion among us. It hence supports the deliberative democracy that we support in our Cooperative and to the quality and legitimacy of our decisions.
2.3 In the general public
In the absence of reliable sources of information and of arguments in their own language, people fall victim to the propagation of fake news. They are many reasons for this (e.g. the biased algorithms feeding the threads of users on social media), many of which are beyond our capacity to act upon. What the CosmoPolitical Cooperative can do however against this is to at least provide a source of reliable and high-quality information and arguments as an alternative.
This action thereby contributes to the quality of discussions in the public sphere.
