Suchergebnisse

Describes experience of: CIRAD with Workshops, Role-playing games ; Moroccan farmers are becoming more involved in managing supply chains, notably through local and regional cooperatives, particularly for milk. However, despite the state's attempts to transfer responsibilities to associations of water users, it retains control of large-scale irrigation schemes. In addition, a decline in surface water available for such schemes has prompted farmers to use groundwater from individual tube wells. Meanwhile, government programmes to relieve water scarcity with drip irrigation technology have not had good uptake from farming communities. The Moroccan branch of the agricultural research centre for development, CIRAD, wanted to help small-scale farmers to better understand drip-irrigation and plan their own group projects. The aim was to use land in ways that better suited the farmers and to encourage farmers to take more ownership of the process. CIRAD wanted to use social learning through this process and put in M&E to capture it. The results include projects that farmers had co-created to meet collective system level water management and that were also tailored to individual farmers. These projects continued to flourish outside of the CIRAD intervention as different farmer groups continued to interact and learn from each other. CIRAD concluded that it was more important to enable farmers to engage with an issue as a group – and design irrigation projects together - than to transfer technology to them.

Describes experience of: CARE with Community-based adaptation, Participatory scenario planning ; CARE International launched the five-year Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP) for Africa in 2010, implemented in Ghana, Niger, Mozambique and Kenya, in partnership with local civil society and government institutions. The programme seeks to identify successful approaches to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) for vulnerable communities through working directly with 40 communities as well as learning with other organisations practising CBA, and support incorporation of these approaches into development policies and programmes in the four countries and their regions in Africa. ALP ran a number of participatory scenario planning (PSP) meetings between meteorologists and local actors with the purpose of building mutual understanding of data needed by local users and in planning responses to weather scenarios collectively. Key here is an element of linking timelines - the immediacy of weather scenarios for the upcoming season and farmer priorities/responses on one hand, whilst at the same time building longer term understanding and capacity to plan/respond to climate change. Part of the process considered important was facilitation with a "light-touch" allowing the overall guided process to create sufficient space for reflection and a sense of ownership. This approach encourages participatory planning and recognises the importance of different knowledge systems by encouraging local communities and government to take ownership of the process. What has become evident is that new knowledge has been created through social learning, and there are encouraging signs that social learning processes are evolving, reflecting on their own purpose and effectiveness, to become more systemic. For example, in Kenya a task force has been created by communities and local government to continue to evolve PSP processes beyond the ALP programme and take implementation of agreed activities forward. Other organisations such as CCAFS have also adapted scenarios processes with respect to socioeconomic uncertainties and interaction with climate change at regional scales.

Agronomist researchers in Italy with a traditional approach to research wanted to raise awareness of nitrate levels in eco-systems. A "nitrate emergency" was declared in the 1990's where levels of nitrates in drinking water were above safe levels. The response was compulsory reduction of the use of fertilisers and other chemicals at individual farm plot level, resulting in reduced yields for farmers. Evidence from agronomists demonstrated that this approach was not effective as the problem was more complex than individual farm level practices – and included production processes across the water basin used so as to meet end-user expectations on type and appearance of produce. The result was a year-long process with iterative phases of learning that brought together different farm groups, government, and end-consumers. The nitrate issue was reframed through social learning processes spanning numerous iterations from a "problem" in terms of how much nitrate used on crops, to part of a wider systemic issue involving collective agreement on crop types, planting approaches, and in managing end-user expectations. Subsequently social learning has become more integrated with the planning and governance process, and the impact has been policy and practice change. Key factors that fostered social learning included co-design of research rather than repackaging as a communications exercise. This happened over time by building physical and social spaces that fostered learning. The facilitator built trust and acted as a common party between different groups. One big challenge that has undermined the process to some extent is the need for local governance bodies to comply with European requirements on farming which do not allow for some of the solutions the stakeholders have collectively developed. These EU requirements come with their own pressures to spend and report and are undermining stakeholder confidence in the ability of a more horizontal governance process working.

Describes experiences of: Oxford University, CCAFS ; The Future Scenarios initiative works in a participatory and interactive way with technical advisors and other key stakeholders in East and West Africa to build some up pictures of different worlds, or narratives, that identify the uncertainties that policy-makers may be faced with at the regional level. The idea is to help decision makers start analysing the transformational changes that will be needed in terms of policies, institutions and governance in agricultural production and food security over the next 15 years. The narratives identify a range of possible pro-active and re-active positions to be taken for a number of different "futures". Lead institution: Oxford University with CCAFS inputting on communications angle Climate communication aims: The communication aim of this initiative is to help build future scenarios that look at the on- the-ground uncertainties around regional social, political, economic uncertainties. It is about building up a picture of what uncertainties policy makers and technical advisors may have to face in the future. Scenarios help inform decision making under uncertainty through the development of a range of plausible futures. The scenarios are aimed at those making difficult choices at regional level and are designed to offer information and data in response to particular situations. The scenarios are not predicting a future or designing a future but offering ideas on what might happen and how to adapt – testing future options. A powerful, but equally important, aim is to build up teams of people who can own and lead the process at a country level and develop the strong relationships that will be needed for complex decision making. Communications/social learning characteristics: The process of building up the regional narratives for the scenarios takes place with key stakeholders, technical advisors researchers, policy makers, media, industry, agricultural scientists, private sector, finance sector etc. Their role is to identify key uncertainties and to describe in some detail what kind of situations they envisage and to take ownership of the process of scenario building and decision making. The international team, the modellers, then take this information and go to other existing models, datasets to quantify these narratives. The process of quantifying the narratives is very important for sharing back with the stakeholders to ensure that a full understanding of the scenario has been represented and developed. The scenario team can then look at their future worlds and decides how best to adapt to each situation. This close exchange between the narrative builders and the data modellers provides a good opportunity for shared learning. It is clear that the existing models and datasets may be constructed on different paradigms but this exchange and challenge is a catalyst for new thinking. The development of the regional team that begins to work together in building the narratives provides a good example of a social learning process that brings together people from different sectors and who will develop new iterations of each scenario by sharing thinking from their own perspectives and will stay close to the scenarios over the time they roll out. There is a certain amount of agenda setting here by the organisers as there is a need for capacity building of participants to be able to use scenarios as a way to plan strategies. However the planning is then done in a participatory way. Using scenarios was originally developed in the military but then became a business tool and has only been used so far in Europe and northern America in the private sector. So despite the top-down agenda setting on "we will take the scenarios approach", building successful scenario relies on a good understanding of realistic, specific, contextual possibilities – this is a very participatory process. Audience: The principle audience are the technical advisors and sector experts, policy makers at national /regional level etc who have been helping in developing the scenarios. Engaging a broader audience including the private sector and civil society organisations happened in a June 2012 workshop and there is strong involvement and support for the process by the East Africa Commission. The internal CGIAR/CCAFS audience is also an important one, but perhaps one that is harder to reach. Getting research into use (how this case study does or does not contribute to that): The Scenarios Project will be used in a number of different ways. Scenarios will be developed as a cross cutting shared activity across the CCAFS programme and it is hoped that it will unlock creative thinking. Scenario analyses will be conducted at regional levels in three initial research regions (East Africa, West Africa and South Asia). The current East African project has a linked communications programme with Panos East Africa that is designed to share learning with the media and with local radio to engage wider audiences. Each of the Scenarios projects has the tangible output of project documents and analyses from each of the workshops but it also has a strong network of team members sharing learning in their own sectors. The project also has a large number of partners with whom it is working – the East African Commission General Secretariat, other CGIAR Centres - IWMI, ICRISAT, ICRAF, ILRI, IFPRI – and more. A key part of this project is the involvement of an expert panel that advises the project – the CCAFS Scenarios Advisory Group – that brings together futures experts from a range of different sectors. Evolution of the project (how has the project evolved or developed if known): Planning workshops have been held with technical advisors in East and West Africa in 2010/11. The aim is to bring these scenarios for discussion with broader audiences in 2012. Global institutions like the IPCC, and the Global Forum for Agricultural Research of FAO have been interested in how this kind of work might be used by in their global foresight work.

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

ABSTRACT Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data. ; publishedVersion

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.

Climate change research is at an impasse. The transformation of economies and everyday practices is more urgent, and yet appears ever more daunting as attempts at behaviour change, regulations, and global agreements confront material and social-political infrastructures that support the status quo. Effective action requires new ways of conceptualizing society, climate and environment and yet current research struggles to break free of established categories. In response, this contribution revisits important insights from the social sciences and humanities on the co-production of political economies, cultures, societies and biophysical relations and shows the possibilities for ontological pluralism to open up for new imaginations. Its intention is to help generate a different framing of socionatural change that goes beyond the current science-policy-behavioural change pathway. It puts forward several moments of inadvertent concealment in contemporary debates that stem directly from the way issues are framed and imagined in contemporary discourses. By placing values, normative commitments, and experiential and plural ways of knowing from around the world at the centre of climate knowledge, we confront climate change with contested politics and the everyday foundations of action rather than just data.