Enabler 3

Overview

Our third enabler is to do with the synthesis and use of knowledge. This is about ensuring that our adaptation actions are supported by the best knowledge and evidence we have available to us at the time we take action, and that the people who have the responsibility for developing plans and policies have a good understanding of the knowledge and evidence behind climate change adaptation and its relation to other aspects of daily life. This builds upon what is important for peoples and places, as well as scientific evidence and data. This focal area is also about recognising that knowledge and evidence can take many forms, and that ‘hard science’ approaches to climate change are one of only a number of ways in which we can understand what makes our society resilient.

  What does this enabler involve?

1. Knowledge availability and accessibility to inform decision making: we need access to data and evidence, including documented lived experience, that is informed by expert advice and local knowledge and can help us to understand how climate risks will affect different people and places in varying ways. It is important that this evidence is presented in a way that is accessible, understandable and enabling to people who may be tasked with adaptation action but may not have specialist knowledge. User-driven climate information and services should be empowering and underpinned by co-design, development, and evaluation with those impacted by climate change. Creative, visual and web-based platforms are especially valuable here.
2. Knowledge competence of policy makers and decision-makers: we need to have people, especially in national and local government, who are able to collect, analyse and share scientific and local knowledge on climate impacts and adaptation. These people need access to frameworks that allow them to weigh up different sources of information about multiple climate risks at the same time, and to understand how these climate risks might impact upon different areas of daily life. We also need effective training processes to ensure that the next generation of climate resilience professionals can make the best use of the data available to them.
3. Synthesis of knowledge across disciplines and scales: Going beyond ‘hard science’ (which is of course important) to bring the creative arts, social sciences, humanities, and lived experiences into our evidence and knowledge base for climate change action, both and the national and local scale.

 What drives this enabler forward?

1. We have a culture and practice of knowledge-sharing and transparency, that encompasses scientific research, and local and experiential knowledge. This means enabling lived experience, creative arts, social science, environmental knowledge and humanities to inform evidence-based decision-making and enhance public awareness.
2. Partnerships, for instance within places or across government sectors, academia and third sector, create conditions for learning and for sharing and accessing different forms of knowledge and expertise; legitimacy and incentives to encourage cross-sectoral and organisational partnerships that validate a range of local knowledges. Our national performance framework and outcomes emphasise a systems approach.
3. We recognize that decisions should be made on the best-available data at any one time. This requires researchers and scientists to understand when data may be ‘good enough’, and not using a lack of perfect data as a reason to delay making decisions or taking action.
4. Our research and development funding landscape encourages applied forms of research, and collaboration and co-creation with end-users from the outset.
5. We recruit, retain and train skilled practitioners, who are able to work with social and environmental knowledge to understand risks and resilience opportunities in an evidence-driven way.

 What might inhibit this enabler from being realised?

1. Lack of access to data and knowledge. This can happen where data and knowledge is not held in a single place, and expertise doesn’t reach the right people and all places/
2. Business, government departments and sectors approach adaptation by focusing on single issues and incremental approaches, as opposed to taking a broader systems approach to climate risk and resilience.
3. We find it difficult to make scientific research publicly-accessible and understandable, for example because of confidentiality or paywall issues. These issues are often bound up with questions of power and control, and mean that those with the least resources are excluded from the information they need to take informed adaptation action.
4. We focus excessively on natural and physical sciences, and on quantifiable or measurable aspects of climate risk and resilience.