Transformative cornerstones of social science research for global change

Given the urgency to compromise the social sciences with the research on global environmental change, the International Social Science Council designed in 2011 the “Climate and Global Environmental Change Design Project” to promote the production of knowledge that may help resolve the crisis associated to climate change in the development of inter and trans-disciplinary initiatives. This article presents a frame of knowledge for the agenda of the project, which the Council has titled “Transformative Cornerstones” that aims to identify the priority objectives to understand the process of global environmental change as social processes and to carry out a deliberate transformation on the policies, institutions, infrastructure, practices and lifestyles. It seeks an alliance between the natural and social sciences to put global environmental change at the center of the concerns of the social sciences and to promote global efforts to improve human wellbeing.Dada la urgencia de comprometer a las ciencias sociales con la investigación sobre el cambio ambiental global, el Consejo Internacional de Ciencias Sociales diseñó en el 2011 el “Proyecto de Diseño para el Cambio Ambiental Climático y Global”, con el fin de promover la producción de conocimiento que pueda ayudar a resolver las crisis asociadas al cambio climático en el desarrollo de iniciativas inter- y trans-disciplinares. Este artículo expone un marco de conocimiento para la agenda del proyecto que el Consejo ha denominado “piedras angulares transformativas” y que pretende identificar los objetivos prioritarios para comprender los procesos del cambio ambiental global como procesos sociales y efectuar una transformación deliberada en las políticas, instituciones, infraestructuras, prácticas y estilos de vida. Se propende por una alianza entre las ciencias naturales y las sociales para que el cambio ambiental esté en el centro de las preocupaciones de estas últimas y para que haya esfuerzos globales que mejoren el bienestar humano

Piedras angulares transformativas de la investigación en ciencias sociales sobre el cambio global

Given the urgency to compromise the social sciences with the research on global environmental change, the International Social Science Council designed in 2011 the “Climate and Global Environmental Change Design Project” to promote the production of knowledge that may help resolve the crisis associated to climate change in the development of inter and trans-disciplinary initiatives. This article presents a frame of knowledge for the agenda of the project, which the Council has titled “Transformative Cornerstones” that aims to identify the priority objectives to understand the process of global environmental change as social processes and to carry out a deliberate transformation on the policies, institutions, infrastructure, practices and lifestyles. It seeks an alliance between the natural and social sciences to put global environmental change at the center of the concerns of the social sciences and to promote global efforts to improve human wellbeing.Dada la urgencia de comprometer a las ciencias sociales con la investigación sobre el cambio ambiental global, el Consejo Internacional de Ciencias Sociales diseñó en el 2011 el “Proyecto de Diseño para el Cambio Ambiental Climático y Global”, con el fin de promover la producción de conocimiento que pueda ayudar a resolver las crisis asociadas al cambio climático en el desarrollo de iniciativas inter- y trans-disciplinares. Este artículo expone un marco de conocimiento para la agenda del proyecto que el Consejo ha denominado “piedras angulares transformativas” y que pretende identificar los objetivos prioritarios para comprender los procesos del cambio ambiental global como procesos sociales y efectuar una transformación deliberada en las políticas, instituciones, infraestructuras, prácticas y estilos de vida. Se propende por una alianza entre las ciencias naturales y las sociales para que el cambio ambiental esté en el centro de las preocupaciones de estas últimas y para que haya esfuerzos globales que mejoren el bienestar humano

Engagement, involvement and empowerment: Three realms of a coproduction framework for climate services

While knowledge coproduction between climate scientists and climate information users has become a common theme in the climate services discourse, the interface between climate service providers and users is an aspect of climate services projects that still calls for more attention. This is due in part to the dominance of the physical sciences in these projects, as well as the prevalence of an instrumental and narrow interpretation of coproduction. Following up on the World Meteorological Organisation’s Guidance on Good Practices for Climate Services User Engagement, and incorporating insights from the social and human sciences, we develop a coproduction framework for climate services to help establish a smooth and effective interface between scientists and stakeholders. This framework is intended for research and innovation projects developing climate knowledge and services. The coproduction framework comprises three realms: (i) engagement using various communication channels; (ii) involvement through interviews, workshops and webinars; and (iii) empowerment of stakeholders and scientists through focused relationships. This incremental participatory process involves stakeholders in increasingly profound ways: from a broad stakeholder group identified through awareness-raising campaigns, on to potential users with whom we exchange knowledge, and then to a set of “champion users” who co-develop the service and pioneer its use in decision-making processes. This paper illustrates the application of the coproduction framework in PRIMAVERA, an EU H2020-funded project for designing, running and testing new high-resolution global climate models and evaluating their outputs. While PRIMAVERA provided ground breaking scientific findings that could potentially benefit various stakeholders and support climate risk assessment activities, these results are highly specialised and their added value has yet to be assessed. Accordingly, the user engagement component of the project faced the challenging task of both motivating stakeholders’ participation in the project and motivating future users of potential services based on PRIMAVERA data. The trial of the framework in PRIMAVERA provided key lessons for enhancing coproduction in research and innovation projects. We demonstrate how the role of scientists gradually shifted in this coproduction cycle from masters of knowledge(Roux et al., 2017) to co-learners, and how the involvement of the project’s interdisciplinary team and their interaction with stakeholders served to move the project towards transdisciplinary knowledge production.The authors are thankful to all the study participants and PRIMAVERA users for their valuable contributions. Their involvement helped us understand how the knowledge exchange and coproduction work. We would also like to acknowledge that the work presented in this paper is based on knowledge and experience that the authors gained from working on various projects, including the EU funded projects PRIMAVERA (641727), APPLICATE (727862), S2S4E (776787), MED-GOLD (776467), Climateurope (689029), EUCP (776613) and EUPORIAS (308291). The opinions expressed in this manuscript are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

One world or two? Science–policy interactions in the climate field

This article assesses how science–policy interactions are conceptualized in the social sciences with special reference to climate change and the IPCC. In terms of the dimension of distance (or proximity) between science and policy, we discern two ideal-type cases: a ‘two-worlds’ and a ‘one-world’ perspective. The first understands science and policy as independent spheres separated by a clear gap, while the second perceives science and policy as tightly coupled. These two perspectives, presented here in detail and in various sub-variants in order to show their complexity, appear dominant also in the discussions on how to improve, not only describe, the interaction between science and policy. We argue that this situation of opposing perspectives is not beneficial, nor properly recognized by scholars in the field. In response to this, we present a typology that may serve as a modest and judicious way for thinking about and making more nuanced choices in designing science–policy relations