CARIAA Working Paper no. 23

Ce document expose certaines leçons de l’Initiative de recherche concertée sur l’adaptation en Afrique et en Asie (IRCAAA), un important programme de recherche transdisciplinaire et interrégional de sept ans ayant appuyé quatre consortiums en Afrique et en Asie. L’IRCAAA s’employait à faire de la recherche sur l’adaptation aux changements climatiques qui soutenait l’apprentissage, produisait des connaissances et des solutions, et guidait les politiques et les pratiques. Au terme de plus de cinq ans d’expérimentation dévouée avec la méthode R4I, et avec de nombreux exemples de contributions réussies aux politiques locales et nationales, ainsi que des échecs, l’IRCAAA offre de riches leçons sur la façon de mettre en œuvre l’approche R4I dans des programmes de recherche d’aussi grande envergure.This paper shares lessons from the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), a seven-year transdisciplinary and cross-regional research programme that supported four consortia spanning Africa and Asia. CARIAA was committed to research on climate change adaptation that supported learning, the co-production of knowledge and solutions, and that informed policy and practice. With more than five years of dedicated experimentation with R4I, and with scores of successful examples of contribution to local and national policy, as well as failures, CARIAA offers rich lessons on how to pursue R4I in similarly large research programmes.UK Ai

Large-scale transdisciplinary collaboration for adaptation research: Challenges and insights

An increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large-scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven-year climate change adaptation research program that supports collaboration between more than 450 researchers and practitioners across four consortia and 17 countries. The experience confirms the importance of attention to careful design for transdisciplinary collaboration, but also highlights that this alone is not enough. The success of well-designed transdisciplinary research processes is also strongly influenced by relational and systemic features of collaborative relationships. Relational features include interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and leadership styles, while systemic features include legal partnership agreements, power asymmetries between partners, and institutional values and cultures. In the new arena of large-scale collaborative science efforts, enablers of transdisciplinary collaboration include dedicated project coordinators, leaders at multiple levels, and the availability of small amounts of flexible funds to enable nimble responses to opportunities and unexpected collaborations

Climate Justice for People and Nature through Urban Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA): A Focus on the Global South

The technical paper showcases practical examples of urban ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) interventions gathered through an online survey and explores their links with seven proposed EbA Social Principles: Participation and inclusiveness, Capacity building, Fairness and equitability, Integration of traditional/local knowledge, Livelihood improvement, Gender consideration and Appropriateness of scale. The paper explores EbA interventions’ potential to deliver climate just outcomes for urban areas in the Global South