Co-creation between cities and climate change science achieves research and action agenda

Abstract

Cities amplify the risks from climate change and advance opportunities to address them. Scientific research offers an evidence-based approach to understanding challenges, and possible responses available to local decision makers as they manage the interface between climate change and urban environments. In March 2018, academics, practitioners and policymakers convened at the Cities and Climate Change Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada to develop an understanding of the science needed to support cities as they mitigate and adapt to climate change. This paper evaluates the process and central output of the conference, to determine how effective the transdisciplinary stakeholders were in using the conference as a platform to explore knowledge on the relationship between cities and climate change science. The paper deploys a sustainability scientific framework centred around the theme of transdisciplinarity to analyse conference documentation and interviews with academic/research, practitioner and policymaker conference organisers. Structural arrangements, power differentials, and assumptions about the prioritisation of scientific knowledge, meant that transdisciplinarity was not always achieved. Yet while the academic voice was dominant, diverse conversations were still held, as seen in the inclusion of and recognition given to the Global South issue of urban informality in the main conference output – a Global Research and Action Agenda for Cities and Climate Change Science. Through applying a framework to evaluate participatory research for sustainability, recounting some of the learnings from this methodological approach, and suggesting how the framework could be amended for future application this paper contributes towards the knowledge on evaluation of sustainability research.