Feature

Collaboration to bridge the gap between climate science and adaptation policy

Feature

Collaboration to bridge the gap between climate science and adaptation policy

The SEI Initiative on Climate Services generated new insights about the reasons why growing stores of knowledge about climate change so seldom gain traction in adaptation policymaking. The initiative's focus on co-design shifted the field's prevailing emphasis from products to processes.

Published on 18 May 2020

About this initiative

SEI initiatives explore key issues on sustainable development, and serve as hubs for our research. The mission of the Initiative on Climate Services was to enhance work in the burgeoning field of climate services: the co-production, tailoring, communication and interpretation of science-based climate information to support policy planning and decision-making. The initiative focused on understanding how co-design and co-production processes could improve decisions and policies to address climate change adaptation. The work took place in urban and rural settings, and on four continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and South America). A central objective was to understand why on-the-ground planning and policy decisions so seldom incorporate relevant and usable climate science and information. The work enhanced understanding about the importance of processes, over particular end products.

Duration: mid-2015 through the end of 2019

Main outputs: the Tandem framework to guide the co-design and co-production of customized climate services

Region: global, with research conducted in Colombia, Kenya, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sweden and Zambia

A new, collaborative framework

The main achievement of the initiative was the creation of a new framework, Tandem, to guide interaction of key people who need to be part of effective decision-making processes for adaptation and other policy contexts. The central premise of the Tandem framework is that the best decisions emerge from incorporating the perspectives of a wide variety of people and disciplines. Such processes bring together insights from people with experience in government, the private sector, civil society, and climate science. The initiative found that expertise central to such processes comes not only from science, but also from on-the-ground politics and life itself. The initiative emphasized that inclusive planning processes that span such areas of expertise can help build capacities of local participants, many of whom have long been sidelined.

The Tandem processes aim to build a foundation that extends beyond climate change adaptation missions per se, to address needed change for sustainable development and the greater good. The processes themselves focus on building human capacity and establishing trustful relationships that can help communities make effective decisions to address the challenges they face.

Refocusing the climate services lens: introducing a framework for co-designing “transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes” to build climate resilience

Journal article / This journal article introduces the Tandem framework to co-design transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes to build resilience to climate change.

23 September 2020 / About Adaptation and Climate services

The Tandem framework: a holistic approach to co-designing climate services

SEI brief / SEI's Tandem framework offers guidance to co-design climate services with scientists and intended users as full design partners.

23 May 2019 / About Adaptation

Working in Tandem: focusing on collaboration to link climate science and climate policy

Feature / The Tandem framework provides a new approach for scientists and decision-makers to work together to make climate science more relevant and usable.

23 May 2019 / About Adaptation

Monitoring, evaluation and learning to build better climate services: A framework for inclusion, accountability and iterative improvement in tandem

SEI brief / Monitoring, evaluation and learning are integral to the ethos of co-design and co-production in Tandem, an SEI framework

27 February 2021 / About Climate policy and Climate services

Using Learning Labs and gameplay

The initiative participated in a project that designed and led collaborative “Learning Labs”, engagements that used gameplay to explore and address key adaptation issues facing fast-growing cities in Africa (through the Future Climate for African CiTies and Lands (FRACTAL) project funded by the UK Department for International Development and the Natural Environment Research Council).The work brought together politicians, engineers, urban planners, climate scientists and community representatives from grassroots organizations working in impoverished, fast-growing informal settlements. The experiences led Windhoek to create the city’s first integrated climate change strategy and action plan, and for the city to help guide other urban areas in taking similar steps.

Learning Labs: creating collaborative ways to address climate change in African cities

Feature / Learning Labs, created by SEI and partners for southern African cities, underscore the importance of collaboration to address urgent climate adaptation needs.

14 January 2020 / About Adaptation, Cities and Climate services

Helping Windhoek plan for climate change

Feature / SEI’s work with partners in the Namibian capital underpins the development of the city’s first integrated climate change strategy and action plan.

10 June 2019 / About Adaptation, Cities, Climate policy and Mitigation

Dealing a new deck of cards: game play to address climate change adaptation

Other publication / Two briefs explain the premise and rules for a game SEI and partners created to help policymakers in urban Africa learn about climate change and its impacts.

28 January 2020 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Using case studies insights for different global contexts

Work in the initiative involved case studies from around the world. Academic work informed ongoing adaptation planning to address climate-related hazards facing Stockholm (heat waves) and Karlstad (flooding), for example. The experiences from these case studies led to publication of research offering a 10-point list of best practices for climate service providers to employ. Other case studies included: improving climate services for farmers in Nigeria; combining science and traditional, indigenous knowledge among smallholders in Bali; and examining co-production processes to address watershed management in Colombia.

Understanding and supporting climate-sensitive decision processes in southern African cities

Journal article / This journal article reviews recent research about how climate information services can be brought to bear in decision-making in southern African cities.

11 May 2021 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Farmers in Bali attend a climate field school.

Co-designing climate services to integrate traditional ecological knowledge: a case study from Bali

SEI report / This SEI report discusses integration of traditional knowledge of Indigenous Peoples into the co-production of climate services for climate change adaptation.

21 October 2020 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Co-designing climate services for water planning: a case study from the Campoalegre River Basin in Colombia

SEI brief / This article provides insights from a case study testing the Tandem framework for the co-design of climate services in Colombia's Campoalegre River Basin.

24 September 2020 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Ten ways to support climate change adaptation planning and decision-making

SEI brief / Here are 10 ways that climate service providers can support climate change adaptation planning and decision-making.

8 January 2020 / About Adaptation, Cities, Climate services and Disaster Risk

Combining indigenous knowledge and modern science

Feature / SEI’s work in Bali brought together farmers’ traditional knowledge and technical meteorological information for more effective climate adaptation.

20 May 2020 / About Climate services

Co-designing climate services to support adaptation to natural hazards: two case studies from Sweden

SEI brief / Two Swedish case studies offer insights about how to improve "co-design" processes to support climate change adaptation planning for natural hazards.

4 February 2020 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Improving the co-production of climate services for agriculture: a case study from Nigeria

SEI brief / Climate services can help agriculture in African countries adapt to climate change.

17 January 2020 / About Adaptation, Climate services and Food and agriculture

Does climate change communication matter for individual engagement with adaptation? Insights from forest owners in Sweden

Journal article / Findings from a new study suggest that climate communication increased the urgency and intention to take adaptive action among Swedish forest owners.

13 January 2020 / About Adaptation, Forests and Participation

Adapting to climate change: SEI case studies test new collaborative approach

Feature / SEI case studies are testing new, more collaborative approaches for helping places around the world better adapt to climate change.

3 April 2019 / About Adaptation and Climate services

Where do we go from here?

Academic work from the initiative continues to test the use of the Tandem framework and refine it. Researchers from the team are exploring the possibility of scaling up the CSI climate farmer field schools conducted in Bali to become a national programme, continuing work with the Indonesian meteorological service (BMKG). There is also interest in scaling up the climate field schools beyond Indonesia.

SEI work on related issues also continues through a recently completed review of climate-science use in adaptation and resilience research and practice. Commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the review has informed the development of its new CLimate And REsilience Framework Programme (CLARE). The programme aims to develop new, more demand-responsive evidence, innovation and capacity to enable developing-country governments and communities to better address climate change challenges and opportunities, and to develop more effective disaster risk management and recovery.

The initiative is also contributing to the “Investment Blueprint for Climate Informed Digital Advisory Services” led by the Global Commission on Adaptation, the World Food Program, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, and the Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security Program (CCAFS). The Action Track on Agriculture and Food Security aims is to mobilize resources to further goals of food security by helping smallholder farmers to improve climate resilience and adapt to climate change. One focus under the Action Track is to expand access to climate-informed “digital agricultural advisory services for at least 100 million small-scale producers by 2030”. This involves extending real-time surveillance and early warning systems, seasonal and long-term forecasts, and digitally enabled farmer advisory services.

Finally, the Tandem online guidance is seeking to build a community of practice with various forms of capacity development to support outreach and use of the framework though webinars, podcasts and video summaries of research.