Reflections on a key component of co-producing climate services: defining climate metrics from user needs

Vincent, Katharine, Archer, Emma, Henriksson, Rebecka, Pardoe, Joanna and Mittal, Neha (2020) Reflections on a key component of co-producing climate services: defining climate metrics from user needs. Climate Services, 20. ISSN 2405-8807

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Abstract

There is increasing recognition of the importance of co-producing climate services to bridge the current “usability” gap in climate information for decision-making – yet understanding precisely how this should take place is less well elaborated. One key stage of the co-production process involves identifying specifically which climate metrics can usefully inform decisions – but methods that can be drawn upon to construct this information are often overlooked. We discuss how the choice and application of four existing social science methods (interview-informed role play workshop, open-ended interviews, prioritised surveys and enhanced surveys) arose out of, and was in turn embedded within, a different epistemological approach characteristic of co-production to identify decision-relevant climate metrics for the water and agriculture sectors in Malawi and Tanzania. In so doing, we reflect on the evolution of our understanding of co-production as our assumptions were challenged, from the expectation that we would be able to “obtain” metrics from users, to a dynamic mutual definition based on better understanding of the decision-making contexts. Such reflections inform emerging experiences of co-production of climate services, as well as having implications for broader contexts beyond the climate change space in which co-production is attempted to improve science-society interactions.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Grantham Research Institute
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences Q Science
Date Deposited:	26 May 2022 14:48
Last Modified:	12 Dec 2024 03:02
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/115219

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