Engaging with Users of Climate Information and the Coproduction of Knowledge

Abstract

Abstract Within the realm of climate and environmental sciences, stakeholder engagement has traditionally been given a relative low priority in favor of generating tools, products, and services following the longstanding practice of pushing out information in the hopes users will pull it into their decision toolkits. However, the landscape is gradually shifting away from that paradigm and toward one in which the stakeholder community is more directly involved in the production of products and services with the scientific organization. This mutual learning arrangement, referred to as the coproduction of knowledge, has been applied to two user engagement activities within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the NOAA Office of Coastal Management (OCM) Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP). The iterative nature of such dialogues helped scientists within NCEI and OCM to better understand user requirements and as a result generate climate information that was locally relevant and regionally applicable. The recent engagement activities exemplified the benefits of a robust and sustained relationship between climate scientists and the user community. They demonstrate that the interactions between the two led to the empowerment of the local community to shape and mold climate information products as well as further enhancing user buy in of these products and services with which local agriculture and food security, disaster risk reduction, energy, health, and water decisions are being made. This coproduction of knowledge model for user engagement activities also serves to build trust between the scientific and user communities.