Promoviendo la aplicación de la Información Climática e Hidrológica y su Traducción en las Políticas, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, 6-8 de octubre 2015 : reporte de taller

Versión en inglés disponible en la Biblioteca Digital del IDRC: Advancing the application of climate and hydrological information and its translation into policy, Panama City, Panama, 6-9 October 2015 : workshop repor

Advancing the application of climate and hydrological information and its translation into policy, Panama City, Panama, 6-9 October 2015 : workshop report

Spanish version available in IDRC Digital Library: Promoviendo la aplicación de la Información Climática e Hidrológica y su Traducción en las Políticas, Ciudad de Panamá, Panamá, 6-8 de octubre 2015 : reporte de tallerAnnex B removedTargeting country teams of modellers, principal investigators (PIs) and policy-makers from International Development Research Centre (IDRC)-funded Climate Change and Water projects in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, the aim of the workshop was to strengthen science-society communication pathways by giving participants the opportunity to reflect on challenges and opportunities of applying climate and hydrological information into policy. The critical role of politicians was highlighted, with policy-makers themselves complaining that politicians do not see the value of the bigger picture, and are less open to alternative management strategies and approache

Climate information websites: an evolving landscape

The climate change agenda is populated by actors and agencies with different objectives, values, and motivations, yet many seek decision scale climate information to inform policy and adaptation responses. A central element of this network of activity is the climate information website (CIW) that has seen a rapid and organic growth, yet with variable content and quality, and unfettered by any code of practice. This builds an ethical–epistemic dilemma that warrants assessment as the presence of CIWs contribute to real-world consequences and commitment. This study considers the context of CIW growth, and reviews a representative sample of CIWs to draw out key issues for consideration in CIW development. We assess content, function, and use-case value through a dual approach of a typology and user experience narratives to evaluate the general efficacy of a CIW. The typology reveals strong contrasts in content, complicated interfaces, and an overload of choice making it difficult to converge on a stable outcome. The narratives capture user experience and highlight barriers that include navigation difficulties, jargon laden content, minimal or opaque guidance, and inferred information without context about uncertainty and limits to skill. This illuminates four concerns: (1) the ethics of information provision in a context of real-world consequences; (2) interfaces that present barriers to achieving robust solutions; (3) weak capacity of both users and providers to identify information of value from the multimodel and multimethod data; and (4) inclusion of data that infer skill. Nonetheless, results provide a positive indication of a community of practice that is still maturing. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e470. doi: 10.1002/wcc.470. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website

Co-production: learning from contexts

Given that climate change is a complex, systemic risk, addressing it requires new knowledge. One way of generating such new knowledge is through co-production, or collaborative development by a range of stakeholders with diverse backgrounds embedded in trans-disciplinary processes. This chapter reflects on emerging experiences of co-producing decision-relevant climate information to enable climate-resilient planning and adaptation to climate change in Africa. It outlines principles that have emerged and evolved through experiential learning from a wide range of co-production processes in Africa. It also uses case study experience from various contexts to highlight some of the more contextual challenges to co-production such as trust, power and knowledge systems and institutional factors (mandates, roles and incentives) and illustrates ways that trans-disciplinary co-production has addressed these challenges to mainstream a response to the climate challenge

Preparing for the future: assessing the vulnerability of small-scale farmers in Bushbuckridge

Includes bibliographical references.The focal aim of this thesis is to assess whether the current coping and adaptation mechanisms of small-scale farmers in the South African Province of Mpumalanga are sufficient for dealing with projected climate change

Communities of practice: One size does not fit all

The need to improve the science-policy/practice divide is recognised for the effective generation and use of climate services to inform adaptation. Intradisciplinary – or within discipline – Communities of Practice (COPs) have long been recognised as a mechanism for furthering the development of information, but the role of transdisciplinary COPs – that span the science-policy/practice divide – is less well studied. In particular it has been claimed that COPs cannot be sustainably created by projects. This paper provides a discussion on what makes each type of COP successful, and a perspective on the extent to which each type of COP can be formed by projects, drawing on experiences from projects in the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) Climate Change and Water (CCW) programme. We argue that there is need for a more nuanced understanding of COPs. Our findings reinforce the literature that intradisciplinary COPs need to be internally generated, but indicate that it may be possible to create sustainable transdisciplinary COPs through projects. It also highlights some experiences for creating effective transdisciplinary COPs to improve development and use of climate services. Keywords: Science communication, Science-policy, Useable science, User