Co-producing science for sustainability: Can funding change knowledge use?

There is widespread belief that meaningful interaction between scientists and practitioners, or co-production, increases use of scientific knowledge about sustainability and environmental change. Although funders are increasingly encouraging co-production, there have been few empirical studies assessing the outcomes of these efforts in shaping knowledge use. In this study, we systematically analyze research project reports (n = 120) and interview project participants (n = 40) funded by the U.S. National Estuarine Research Reserve System from 1998 to 2014 to support coastal management. Our analysis shows that escalating funding requirements for collaboration with users change research practice and strengthen connections between research outcomes and knowledge use. In consequence, a new model for science funding emerges, where sponsor, researcher, and user are more interactive with one another.     

The role of culture and traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation: Insights from East Kimberley,Australia

Indigenous peoples offer alternative knowledge about climate variability and change based on their own locally developed knowledges and practices of resource use. In this article we discuss the role of traditional ecological knowledge in monitoring and adapting to changing environmental conditions. Our case study documents a project to record the seasonal knowledge of the Miriwoong people in northern Australia. The study demonstrates how indigenous groups’ accumulate detailed baseline information about their environment to guide their resource use and management, and develop worldviews and cultural values associated with this knowledge. We highlight how traditional ecological knowledge plays a critical role in mediating indigenous individuals and communities’ understandings of environmental changes in the East Kimberley region of north-west Australia, and how these beliefs may influence future decision-making about how to go about adapting to climate change at a local level.     

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.     

Global evaluation of shark sanctuaries

Due to well-documented declines in many shark populations there is increasing pressure to implement new management and rebuilding strategies at the national and international scale. Since 2009, fifteen coastal countries in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans have opted to ban commercial shark fishing altogether, and have laws that prohibit the possession, trade or sale of sharks and shark products. These ‘shark sanctuaries’ collectively cover >3% of the world’s oceans, a similar coverage as all currently established marine protected areas combined. Despite their prominence, and an intense scientific debate about their usefulness, the condition of shark sanctuaries has not yet been empirically evaluated. Here, we report results from a global diver survey used to set baselines of shark populations, human use patterns, public awareness and threats in all 15 shark sanctuaries, and contrasted with observations from 23 non-sanctuary countries. Specific results varied by country, but there were some general trends: i) shark sanctuaries showed less pronounced shark population declines, fewer observations of sharks being sold on markets, and lower overall fishing threats compared to non-shark sanctuaries, ii) bycatch, ghost gear, marine debris and habitat destruction are significant threats that are often not addressed by sanctuary regulations and need to be resolved in other ways, and iii) participants in sanctuaries were more optimistic about the survival of shark populations in local waters, but also highlighted the need for further conservation efforts. These results suggest that shark sanctuaries, as seen through the lens of local experts, may be a helpful conservation tool but likely not sufficient in isolation. There is an urgent need for higher-resolution data on shark abundance, incidental catch, and markets to direct priority conservation needs and optimize the conservation benefits of existing and future shark sanctuaries.     

Does effective climate policy require well-informed citizen support?

Citizen support for climate policies is typically seen as an important criterion in climate policy making. Some studies of climate policy support assume that a significant number of citizens need to be aware of the policies in question and able to provide informed opinions. In this study, we probe this assumption using a web-based survey of residents of the Canadian province of British Columbia (n = 475) by assessing: (1) citizen awareness and knowledge of climate policies, (2) citizen support for different climate policies, (3) the relationship between citizen knowledge and policy support, and (4) the effect of information provision on policy support. Our main finding is that most survey respondents are not aware of any of British Columbia's climate policies, and have little understanding of the potential effect of these on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Once they are made aware of different types of climate policies, respondents are more likely to express support for regulations, such as the zero-emissions electricity standard and energy efficiency regulations, and less likely to support a carbon tax. Statistical analysis indicates that citizen knowledge of policy is not associated with higher policy support. Furthermore, providing information on likely policy effectiveness to our survey respondents did not translate into higher support, suggesting that widespread knowledge and well-informed citizen support are not necessarily required for implementation of effective climate policies.     

基于雾霾案例的新媒体时代科学传播范式研究

新媒体环境下,以雾霾为切入点的环境问题迅速成为公众、媒体和政府关注的焦点,各利益相关方表现出对雾霾科学信息的不同需求。科学成果在传播内容及其表现形式、传播主体、传播路径等方面呈现出新的模式：成果传播的受众由少至多,成果传播的内容和形式不断多样化,成果数量呈现爆发式增长,更新速率不断加快,传播主体大众化,传播路径由单一向多元化转变;新媒体在有助于推动公众参与环境保护的同时,也给科学传播工作带来了挑战,建议有效利用新媒体的传播渠道,加强环境信息及科学知识的公开和普及,以提高环境保护和治理的能力。     

Towards practitioner-initiated interactive knowledge development for sustainable development: A cross-case analysis of three coastal projects

Although the central challenges of sustainable development are well-known, sustainability science has been slow in contributing to effective and feasible solutions for sustainable development. Turning knowledge into action for sustainable development therefore remains a major challenge for sustainability science. Interactive knowledge development is considered a prerequisite for sustainability-oriented action. Most studies approach interactive knowledge development from a researcher's perspective. This paper focuses on practitioners that initiate interactive knowledge development for sustainability-oriented actions. A cross-case analysis is presented for interactive knowledge development in coastal projects. Three cases are analysed through the framework of project arrangements and knowledge arrangements. The projects are located in the Wadden Sea, San Francisco Bay and the Ems estuary and address issues of flood control, nature restoration and liveability. The cross-case analysis revealed 11 causal mechanisms that help explain how project decision-making impacts on interactive knowledge development, how a process of interactive knowledge development functions and what its outcomes are. The mechanisms clarify the key underlying processes of interactive knowledge development in coastal projects. The mechanisms show that interactive knowledge development may result in sustainability-oriented solutions that are feasible for implementation. As such, this paper contributes to a practice-oriented understanding of turning knowledge into action for sustainable coastal development.     

Consistency of simulated and observed regional changes in temperature, sea level pressure and precipitation

There is increasing pressure from stakeholders for highly localised climate change projections. A comprehensive assessment of climate model performance at the grid box scale in simulating recent change, however, is not available at present. Therefore, we compare observed changes in near-surface temperature, sea level pressure (SLP) and precipitation with simulations available from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects 3 and 5 (CMIP3 and CMIP5). In both multi-model datasets we find coherent areas of inconsistency between observed and simulated local trends per degree global warming in both temperature and SLP in the majority of models. Localised projections should thus take into account the possibility of regional biases shared across models. In contrast, simulated changes in precipitation are not significantly different from observations due to low signal-to-noise ratio of local precipitation changes. Therefore, recent regional rainfall change is likely not providing useful constraints for future projections as of yet. Comparing the two most recent sets of internationally coordinated climate model experiments, we find no indication of improvement in the models’ ability to reproduce local trends in temperature, SLP and precipitation.     

Empirical testing of the visualizations of climate change mitigation scenarios with citizens: A comparison among Germany,Poland, and France

While scenarios are used extensively for communication about climate change mitigation, little is known about the interpretation of these scenarios by citizens. We conducted a cross-country empirical evaluation of scenario visualizations for global mitigation, using online surveys in Germany (N = 379), Poland (N = 223), and France (N = 225). Each respondent received visualizations of the required changes in global carbon dioxide emissions and composition of electricity supply (fossil fuels, nuclear, and renewable sources) for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. We evaluated the effects of respondents’ demographics, prior beliefs, numeracy, and graph literacy on the reading accuracy and knowledge gains from the visualizations. We also included an experimental between-groups design on visualization format, where four groups received different graph formats (steep or gradual graphs with depictions of uncertainty ranges or scenario ensembles) and the fifth group received a table. Results showed that higher education level, numeracy, and graph literacy increased reading accuracy in all countries, while age reduced them. Respondents with prior beliefs about climate change mitigation that matched the information in the visualizations had also higher reading accuracy and knowledge gains. While the effects of different visualization formats were comparatively minor, customizing formats according to demographic and country differences was used to reduce adverse effects from these differences. These results emphasize the need to design visualizations that match characteristics of the intended audience and could inform better communication of climate change mitigation scenarios to non-expert audience.     

Linking vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience science to practice: Pathways, players, and partnerships

Vulnerability, adaptation and resilience are concepts that are finding increasing currency in several fields of research as well as in various policy and practitioner communities engaged in global environmental change science, climate change, sustainability science, disaster risk-reduction and famine interventions. As scientists and practitioners increasingly work together in this arena a number of questions are emerging: What is credible, salient and legitimate knowledge, how is this knowledge generated and how is it used in decision making? Drawing on important science in this field, and including a case study from southern Africa, we suggest an alternative mode of interaction to the usual one-way interaction between science and practice often used. In this alternative approach, different experts, risk-bearers, and local communities are involved and knowledge and practice is contested, co-produced and reflected upon. Despite some successes in the use and negotiation of such knowledge for ‘real’ world issues, a number of problems persist that require further investigation including the difficulties of developing consensus on the methodologies used by a range of stakeholders usually across a wide region (as the case study of southern Africa shows, particularly in determining and identifying vulnerable groups, sectors, and systems); slow delivery of products that could enhance resilience to change that reflects not only a lack of data, and need for scientific credibility, but also the time-consuming process of coming to a negotiated understanding in science–practice interactions and, finally, the need to clarify the role of ‘external’ agencies, stakeholders, and scientists at the outset of the dialogue process and subsequent interactions. Such factors, we argue, all hinder the use of vulnerability and resilience ‘knowledge’ that is being generated and will require much more detailed investigation by both producers and users of such knowledge.     

Explaining risk perception of microplastics: Results from a representative survey in Germany

Plastic pollution through small particles, so-called microplastics, is acknowledged as an environmental problem of global dimension by both politicians, and the public. An increasing number of environmental studies investigate the exposure and effects of microplastics. Although there are many open questions, current scientific evidence does not confirm a high risk for the environment. At the same time, the issue receives great public attention, which in turn motivates various political and policy actions. So far, little research has examined the underlying social dimensions, i.e., the factors explaining individual risk perception of microplastics. This paper studies the perception of risks associated with microplastics concerning the environment and human health using data from a representative online survey conducted in Germany (n = 1027). We particularly examine the role of socio-demographics, individual awareness, knowledge factors, and the media’s influence on risk perception. Our results show that a majority of the respondents rates the risks through microplastics very high for both the environment and human health. Regression analyses demonstrate that environmental awareness and knowledge of media narratives are the strongest predictors for this risk perception. Our study illustrates the incongruence between scientific knowledge, media framing, and the public opinion concerning the risk posed by microplastics.     

Conceptualization and implementation of ecosystems-based adaptation

While ecosystems-based adaptation (EbA) has been received with great interest, the requirements for EbA implementation and its precise benefits under future climate change are unclear. Furthermore, EbA’s overlap with environmental, and development policy agendas leads to ambiguity regarding what actions fall under the rubric of EbA. We analyze the projects identified by the UNFCCC as examples of EbA to understand how EbA is conceptualized and promoted by the international community. Addressing climate change is the primary objective of 58% of the EbA projects; the other 42% of projects provide adaptation benefits yet are not primarily driven by climate change. A project’s adaptation targeting is tied to its information needs. Projects whose primary objective is to address climate change are more likely to use detailed climate projections than projects whose primary objective is to address natural hazards, development or ecosystems degradation. A majority of projects do not address uncertainty in future climate change or in adaptation benefits, nor do they track adaptation outcomes. This prevalent lack of monitoring highlights the possibility of a gap between expected and realized adaptation outcomes. It also represents a lost opportunity for improving knowledge of the thresholds of effectiveness of EbA and of factors influencing EbA efficacy.     

Understanding of the Effect of Climate Change on Tropical Cyclone Intensity: A Review

The effect of climate change on tropical cyclone intensity has been an important scientific issue for a few decades.Although theory and modeling suggest the intensification of tropical cyclones in a warming climate,there are uncertainties in the assessed and projected responses of tropical cyclone intensity to climate change.While a few comprehensive reviews have already provided an assessment of the effect of climate change on tropical cyclone activity including tropical cyclone intensity,this review focuses mainly on the understanding of the effect of climate change on basin-wide tropical cyclone intensity,including indices for basin-wide tropical cyclone intensity,historical datasets used for intensity trend detection,environmental control of tropical cyclone intensity,detection and simulation of tropical cyclone intensity change,and some issues on the assessment of the effect of climate change on tropical cyclone intensity.In addition to the uncertainty in the historical datasets,intertwined natural variabilities,the considerable model bias in the projected large-scale environment,and poorly simulated inner-core structures of tropical cyclones,it is suggested that factors controlling the basin-wide intensity can be different from individual tropical cyclones since the assessment of the effect of climate change treats tropical cyclones in a basin as a whole.     

Compound[ing] disasters in Puerto Rico: Pathways for virtual transdisciplinary collaboration to enhance community resilience

Puerto Rico has been subject to complex and compounding effects of multiple disasters, exacerbated by sociopolitical, climactic, and geographical challenges that complicate relief and resilience. Interdisciplinary teams are uniquely suited to traverse emerging challenges in post-disaster settings, but there are few studies that leverage transdisciplinary skill sets and virtual co-production of knowledge to build on local autonomous responses. Communities are key sources of information and innovation which can serve as a model for recovery amidst disaster. Thus, an interdisciplinary team of emerging scholars collaborated with Caras con Causa, a local organization in Cataño, Puerto Rico, to develop processes for enhancing autonomous responses to disaster events through participatory pathways, specifically highlighting local knowledge and preferences. The results of this collaboration include: (1) an iterative process model for transdisciplinary co-production in virtual settings and (2) key highlights from post engagement reflections including community-scale definitions of disaster, and limitations to virtual collaboration amidst disaster. Together, these results yielded critical insights and lessons learned, including recommendations for improved project communication methods within transdisciplinary and virtual collaborations. Collectively, the process, it’s resulting products, and the post-engagement reflections demonstrate a pathway for scholars and community members to engage disaster resilience challenges. These strategies are most effectively practiced through focused collaboration with community stakeholders and are paramount in solving real-world challenges related to the increasing complex of compounding disasters.     

Assessing the ‘usability’ of climate change research for decision-making: A case study of the Canadian International Polar Year

The creation of ‘usable science’ is widely promoted by many environmental change focused research programs. Few studies however, have examined the relationship between research conducted as part of such programs and the decision-making outcomes that the work is supposed to advance, and is constrained by limited methodological development on how to empirically assess the ‘usability’ of science. Herein, this paper develops a conceptual model and assessment rubric to quantitatively and systematically evaluate the usability of climate change research for informing decision-making. We focus on the process through which data is collected, analyzed and reported and examine the extent to which key principles of usable science are integrated into project design, using grant proposals as our data source. The approach is applied to analyze climate change research conducted as part of the International Polar Year in Canada, with 23 projects identified as having explicit goals to inform decision-making.While the creation of usable science was promoted by funded projects in the International Polar Year, this was not generally reflected in research design: fewer than half determined objectives with input of decision makers, decision context was not widely considered, and knowledge users were not widely reported to be engaged in assessing the quality of data or in resolving conflict in evidence. The importance of science communication was widely emphasized, although only 8/23 projects discussed tailoring specific results for end user needs. Thus while International Polar Year research has made significant advances in understanding the human dimensions of Arctic climate change, key attributes necessary for determining success in linking science to decision-making (pertinence, quality, timeliness) were not captured by many projects. Integrating these attributes into research design from the outset is essential for creating usable science, and needs to be at the forefront of future research programs which aim to advance societal outcomes. The framework for assessing usability here, while developed and tested in an Arctic climate change context, has broader applicability in the general environmental change field.     

On viability: Climate change and the science of possible futures

Growing attention to the impacts of climate change around the world has been accompanied by the profusion of discourses about the lives, livelihoods, and geographies that are “viable” and those that are not in the time of climate change. These discourses of viability often invoke concrete physical limits and tipping points suggesting a transcendent natural order. Conversely, I demonstrate how viability is co-produced through political economic structures that exercise power at multiple scales in shaping the environment and understandings of how it is changing. I describe three dialectics of this co-production: epistemic/material (between ideas about viability and their biophysical and political economic conditions), epistemic/normative (between how the world is understood to be and ideas about how we should live in it), and inter-scalar (between geographic scales, where action at one scale shapes both ecologies and understandings of possible action at another). Each of these dialectics shapes the knowledge regimes that govern the ambiguous social and biophysical process of disappearance and foreclosure of livelihood possibilities in the time of climate change. I examine these discourses of viability through narratives of unviable agrarian livelihoods in coastal Bangladesh, as a lens through which to examine the dialectics of viability more broadly. I situate these discourses concretely in relation to an analysis of interdisciplinary social and natural scientific research on ecological and agrarian viability in coastal Bangladesh now and in the future. Across a broad interdisciplinary spectrum, I find that scientific attention to political economy shapes the politics of possibility. Finally, I demonstrate how discourses of viability limit alternative possible economic and ecological futures. I do this through a concrete examination of the co-production of viable agrarian futures within communities in coastal Bangladesh. These alternative visions indicate that the viability of agriculture is shaped by historical and ongoing decisions in the present about cultivation, water management, and development intervention.     

Satellite monitoring of pollution in the Russian sector of the Azov and Black Seas in 2003–2007

The results of satellite monitoring of pollution in the Russian sector of the Azov-Black Sea basin in 2003–2007 are considered. Within the framework of this work, a technology of monitoring the state and pollution of the water environment from satellite information received during this period from Russian and foreign satellites has been developed. With this technology, the coastal pollution parameters and hydrometeorological characteristics of the water environment in the area of observation were mapped operationally; 14 types of different satellite information products were issued daily; and the results were generalized over 3 days, ten days, a month, and a period of observation. Long-term satellite monitoring makes it possible to determine and analyze typical situations of pollution distribution in the coastal waters and to detect new circulation elements that transport pollutants, thus purifying the water environment. For example, for the first time, it was found from satellite data that the contribution of a small-scale circulation of waters of the Russian sector of the Black Sea to the transport and distribution of pollutants is commensurable with the contribution of the Main Black Sea Current and coastal anticyclonic eddies. The regularities in the dynamics of pollution distribution promote the increased reliability of charting of the environmental situation, including the prediction of dynamics of pollution spreading.     

Climate change influences on pollinator,forest, and farm interactions across a climate gradient

Improved cookstoves have been identified in Mexico as a key opportunity to advance sustainable local development priorities in disadvantaged regions while mitigating climate change. This paper reviews the Patsari Cookstove Project initiated in 2003 by an NGO, Interdisciplinary Group on Appropriate Rural Technology (GIRA). The project applied an interdisciplinary and participative user-centered approach to disseminate improved cookstoves in rural Mexico, with a special focus on indigenous and poor rural communities. To date, GIRA and the Patsari Network have disseminated thousands of stoves using a “training to trainers” model. Benefits from the project include tangible improvements in users’ health, as well as savings in time and money expended on fuelwood procurement and use. The project has also documented substantive environmental benefits from significant mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with traditional open fires. To sustain scaling up efforts over the long-term, two networks have been created: The Patsari Network, which includes several organizations promoting Patsari stoves for household users, and the Tsiri Network, which supports local food security and the empowerment of indigenous women through the promotion of institutional cookstoves. Through appropriately designed and implemented local interventions, the project demonstrates that the goals of advancing sustainable local development in rural areas and climate change mitigation may not be contradictory, and may in fact reinforce one another.