The politics of hiding and experiences of decentering development in mangrove rice farming in Guinea-Bissau

Guest Editorial: Ecological knowledge co‐production and the contested imaginaries of development in Southeast Asia

Enhancing national climate services: How systems thinking can accelerate locally led adaptation

BackgroundCoastal areas in Guinea-Bissau and elsewhere in West Africa are bordered by mangrove forests. In several of these places, swaths of mangrove forest have been removed and the landscape has been technologically adapted for the production of mangrove rice–a regionally important staple. However, the effects of global warming, in particular sea-level rise, pose challenges to these socioecological environments. In this context, knowledge appears as an important resource and knowing what knowledge has been produced and which perspectives have guided that production may inform future responses to climate change. We have developed a systematic literature review protocol focusing on the main question: “How have mangrove forest and mangrove rice spaces been represented in the literature on Guinea-Bissau?” The main hypothesis is that although they occupy contiguous, interrelated and interactant spaces in coastal environments, mangrove forests and mangrove rice have been studied and analyzed independently in the literature.MethodsThis is a protocol for conducting a systematic review that will include academic and non-academic literature in Portuguese, English and French. The academic literature will be retrieved from both Web of Science and Scopus using Boolean expressions. The non-academic literature will be accessed from relevant institutions, specialized libraries, and reference lists of previously selected items. Data extraction will follow a standard procedure based on an information sheet. Our analysis will be both qualitative (inductive and deductive coding, content analysis) and quantitative (word clouds, descriptive statistics and statistical testing).DiscussionThis systematic review will provide information about the conceptual framework that has been produced through research, policymaking, and conservation and development programs in the management of coastal areas. This study will identify the limitations of previous approaches and contribute to both future research and strategies for planning adaptation to climate change. Finally, the outputs will add to broader debates about people-nature coexistence and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

ABSTRACTThe effects of climate change add to the challenges facing those with rice‐based livelihoods in West Africa. This article presents a long‐term ethnographic case study in southern Guinea‐Bissau where, in contrast to other reported cases in the region, uncertainty regarding the future of mangrove rice production overlaps with efforts to rehabilitate abandoned mangrove rice paddies. Agricultural knowledge is produced, renewed and transmitted along with the construction of site‐specific, techno‐ecological hybrids needed for water management in rice fields. This article analyses the role of communal, reciprocal and contract labour in the circulation of knowledge between villages with historically stable rice production (rice refugia) and villages where production has been discontinuous (rice margins). Knowledge circulation and experimentation are key to local adaptation to climate change and climate resilience programmes can play a role if they are able to adapt to current needs, for instance, by considering decentralized funding strategies. By promoting the exchange of services and goods, decentralization of funding can facilitate the redistribution of knowledge and labour, particularly if rice refugia, as regional knowledge repositories, participate in the recovery of rice production in rice margins. These connections revitalize and strengthen regional rice knowledge networks and their ability to confront climate change.

As freshwater supplies become increasingly threatened by overuse, pollution, and changes in climate, governing bodies have begun to recognize the urgent need for flexible, sustainable solutions to water use and management. Collaborative governance of water resources has arisen as a widespread strategy to develop such solutions in a way that integrates diverse stakeholder needs and works to create consensus‐driven management actions. Directly linking the outputs of collaborative processes to improved water sustainability is difficult even on a local scale. However, examining diverse collaborative governance processes, particularly the outputs and outcomes produced and barriers faced, is necessary as these processes continue to flourish at a multitude of scales and settings. In 2005, the state of Colorado initiated a collaborative governance process to assess its existing water resources and future water needs; the information gathered through this endeavor is now being used to inform the creation of Colorado's first statewide water plan. Using data from 28 in‐depth interviews with key participants in this process, this paper highlights not only what outputs and outcomes may be produced through a high‐stakes collaborative process, but also what barriers exist to producing desired outputs (and therefore, consequent outcomes). Gaining a better understanding of outputs, outcomes, and barriers within a statewide collaborative water governance process can provide insight into improving future decision‐making processes and evaluations of those processes in a variety of natural resource arenas.

Pennsylvania State University, USADespite overwhelming consensus among scientists about thereality of anthropogenic climate change (Bray, 2010; Oreskes,2004), there remains significant reluctance on the part ofcitizens and politicians to take the action needed to addressit. This resistance has been repeatedly identified in socialresearch (Leiserowitz & Maibach, 2010; Leviston, Leitch,Greenhill, Leonard, & Walker, 2011; Lorenzoni & Pidgeon,2006; McCright & Dunlap, 2011; Reser, Bradley, Glendon,Ellul, & Callaghan, 2012) and is mirrored by the lack of prog-ress made by salient political summits (Rogelj et al., 2010).Perhaps as a response to this, scholarly journals and articlesthat are focused on climate change are growing. Naturalscientists tell us that we know what needs to be done to avertdangerous climate change (IPCC, 2014), and economists tellus that delaying action in the short term will lead to muchgreater costs in the long term (Stern, 2007). Understandingpublic responses to climate change and developing solutionsto catalyse action is a critical challenge for the social sciences,and we propose that the development and elaboration of asocial psychology of climate change would be a cornerstoneof such an approach.We do not make the claim that social psychology has all theanswers but rather that the theories, models and researchmethods of social psychology can provide a powerful arsenalto complement the approaches of other disciplines. Re-searchers have already begun to apply social psychologicaltheory and methods to the issue of climate change, and wehighlight in the following sections examples of the insightsthat have flowed from this. We cannot assume, though, thatour theories and findings will automatically generalise to theclimate change context. As Moser (2010) has noted, thereare unique dimensions to climate change that make it distinctfrom other environmental, risk and health issues: The causesof climate change are invisible to humans, the impacts are dis-tal and it is complex and riddled with uncertainties. Modernurban humans are to some extent insulated from their physicalenvironment, and the lags between the climate and social sys-tems make it difficult for people to understand their role ininfluencing climate.These factors suggest the importance of developing a socialpsychology of climate change, empirically testing, integratingand refining existing theories and models to develop newframeworks. The notion that psychology can play a role inunderstanding and addressing climate change is not a newone. The American Psychological Association’s Task Forceon the interface between psychology and global climatechange comprehensively detailed the ways in which psycho-logical research can help to understand people’s perceptionsof the risks of climate change, the contribution of human be-haviour to climate change, the psychosocial impacts of climatechange, the ways in which people can adapt and cope withclimate change and the psychological barriers that could limitclimate change action (Swim et al., 2009, 2011).It is also not a new idea that social psychology can play animportant role in understanding and addressing environmentalproblems and solutions (Clayton & Brook, 2005). Social psy-chology, specifically, has a long tradition oftheory andresearchthat is relevant to addressing key climate change questions.Attitudes, social cognition, persuasion and attitude change, so-cial influence, and intragroup and intergroup behaviour, forinstance, are fundamental foci for social psychology and havedirect relevance for understanding the human and social dimen-sionsofclimatechange.Thetimeisripetounderstandtherangeof research that has been developing in social psychology onattitudes, beliefs and actions, to build upon these insights, andintegrate them with knowledge from other sciences to developmodels and theories indigenous to the climate change context.In the following section, we provide a brief overview of re-cent social psychological research that addresses three broadthemes relevant to understanding and responding to climatechange. These themes are as follows: (i) social psychologicalinfluences on climate change attitudes and beliefs; (ii) facilita-tors and barriers to climate change action; and (iii) changingclimate change attitudes and behaviour. Although there issome overlap in these themes, as an organising principle theyintuitively map on to key questions that arise in relation to cli-mate change. Our aim is to highlight recent examples of socialpsychological research that provide interesting and importantinsights in relation to these themes. Swim, Markowitz, andBloodhart (2012) have noted that much of the social psycho-logical research on climate change has emerged since 2006;we focus in on the most recent of this research that has beenpublished since 2010. We also outline how the studies in thespecial issue relate to these themes. We recognise that theseare not the only areas where social psychological researchand theory can make important contributions but they never-theless relate to key questions that need to be addressed. Weconclude the introduction by proposing considerations thatsocial psychologists could take into account in their futureresearch on climate change.European Journal of Social Psychology, Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 44, 413–420 (2014)

BackgroundRecovery Colleges are mental health-oriented education programs that are rooted in principles of peer support and co-production. Co-production, in this context, involves people with lived experience of mental health and addiction challenges and people with other forms of expertise (e.g., mental health professionals, administrators, and researchers) collaborating on the design and actualization of programs and initiatives. Despite co-production being a central feature of Recovery Colleges, very few Recovery College evaluations appear to be co-produced. In addition, there is a lack of research that evaluates the quality of the co-production processes in developing evaluations. The Recovery College at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, called the Collaborative Learning College, established an Evaluation Subcommittee with the goal of co-designing and implementing an evaluation plan for the program. In response to the dearth of literature on co-producing Recovery College evaluations and the quality of such collaborative processes, the Evaluation Subcommittee conducted a principles-focused evaluation to assess the quality of their process of co-producing an evaluation plan.MethodsAll members of the Evaluation Subcommittee collaboratively developed and agreed on three principles that they felt were most important in their co-production process. Using a self-narrative approach, each member then produced a reflection on the importance of the principles, the degree to which the committee adhered to them, and the impact. Finally, members engaged in collaborative thematic analysis and co-wrote this manuscript.ResultsThe results of this study outline member’s purposes for joining the Evaluation Subcommittee, the strengths and challenges related to embodying the collaborative principles, and the associated impacts.ConclusionsThe findings demonstrate the value of co-producing health education evaluations with people with lived experience and highlight important lessons learned through the Evaluation Subcommittee’s collaborative process, specifically related to mitigating the impacts of power imbalances. These lessons can be valuable for others to consider in their co-production processes.

Mangrove rice farmers in Guinea-Bissau are facing climatic changes (i.e., seawater flooding and decreasing rainfall) that threaten their livelihood. In addition, cultural transformations (e.g., abandonment of bush initiations) have affected inter-generational knowledge exchange and elders’ control over youth. Our ethnographic research documents the construction of a dam in a village in southern Guinea-Bissau to protect rice farms from seawater flooding. In a struggle for increased access to land, the youth of the village formed an association to ensure the availability of labor and promote knowledge exchange. Inter-village expert knowledge of mangrove rice farming is disseminated through networks of reciprocity that exist alongside village, household, and age-based knowledge transmission. Farmers’ capacity to experiment with technological solutions and expand the connections in regional knowledge networks is crucial to ongoing adaptation. Multidimensional rural development strategies are of importance to respond to changing climatic and socio-cultural conditions.

A brief review of archaeological data is given and their relevance to the reconstruction of climate and water level changes is discussed. Research since the nineteenth century has established a good database, especially for the southern Aral Sea region (ancient Khorezmia). Human occupation of the area first began during the Late Pleistocene, but was interrupted by the last glaciations. The Aral Basin was again settled by Neolithic populations after the 8.2 ky event and continued until now. A humid climate is indicated for the early period, as several large lakes in the Kyzylkum sustained Neolithic settlements, however, the water level of the Aral Sea may have been low, since the Amudarya drained to the Caspian Sea via the Uzboi at this time. Towards the end of the Third Millennium bc in the northern Aral region forest–steppe vegetation predominated, as indicated by a cultural and economic change in archaeological culture. Around 2000 bc the Amudarya stopped flowing to the Caspian Sea, changing its course to the Akchadarya channel which was now densely settled for the first time. The water level may have reached 40–45 m above sea level (a.s.l.). Climate change is indicated as causing the Scytho-Saka migration at the beginning of the First Millennium bc. Beginning from the sixth century bc irrigation activity may have influenced the water balance and possibly the Uzboi was active for part of this period. A major regression in the fourth century ad was probably caused by climate, but aggravated by extensive irrigation systems. In the tenth century water level was below 53 m a.s.l., although both Amudarya and Syrdarya drained to the Aral Sea. Extreme regressions in the early thirteenth century and at the end of the fourteenth century were caused by war, possibly also influenced by earthquakes. In both cases dams were destroyed and the Amudarya drained to the Sarykamysh depression and/or the Uzboi, withdrawing water supply from the Aral Sea. A transgression sometime after the fourteenth century is documented by marine sediments overlying archaeological sites and may have existed as late as the nineteenth century.

In the United States, government agencies at the national and state levels increasingly have resolved conflict using collaborative tools such as facilitated negotiation, policy dialogues, mediation, and negotiated rule-making. Despite growing use of these tools, numerous writers caution against the notion that collaboration should be embraced as the preferred solution to complex policy disputes. Concerns have been raised about the relative power and authority of participants in such processes, reflecting the potential for exclusion, domination, or cooptation of some parties. Some research suggests that differences in political resources account for the privileging of some parties in negotiated rulemaking processes (Langbein, 2002). The objective of this research is to enrich our understanding of the forms and expressions of power employed by parties to collaborative rulemaking processes. A collaborative rulemaking process is analyzed using Hardy & Phillips (1998) framework of power to understand the means by which parties attempt to frame the conflict and establish the legitimacy of their claims. This analysis offers insight into how organizations seek to satisfy their interests within a collaborative process through the use of authority, resources and discursive legitimacy. It also illustrates how organizations seek to enhance their discursive legitimacy by linking their efforts to larger societal values.

What may we hope for? Education in times of climate change

This review work was conducted to explore the likely impacts of climate change on livestock health. Currently, the world is facing a number of challenges, of which climate change is a priority area. Climate change affects livestock health through several pathways involving both direct and indirect effect. The direct effects being most likely pronounced for diseases that are vector- borne, soil associated, water or flood associated, rodent associated, or air temperature/humidity associated and sensitive to climate. Furthermore, Climate change influences the emergence and proliferation of disease hosts or vectors and pathogens and their breeding, development and disease transmission. Consequently, it affects distributions and host–parasite relationships and its assemblages to new areas. Climate factors also influences habitat suitability, distribution, and abundance; intensity and temporal pattern of vector activity. Pathogens and parasites that are sensitive to moist or dry conditions may be affected by changes to precipitation and soil moisture. Higher temperatures resulting from climate change may increase the rate of development of certain pathogens or parasites that have one or more life cycle stages outside their animal host. This may shorten generation times and, possibly, increase the total number of generations per year, leading to higher pathogen/ parasite population sizes. Mammalian cellular immunity can be suppressed following heightened exposure to ultraviolet. In particular, there is depression of the number of T helper 1 lymphocytes, the cells involved in the immune response to intracellular pathogens. Therefore, successful adaptations may be shown as better way of coping with the negative consequences of climate change on livestock health.

In this position paper, I speculate on what we might learn about the politics of climate change if we stay with the possibility that boredom might be part of how subjects encounter and make sense of climate change. I argue that boredom enacts an ethically and politically ambivalent detachment from the demand to act that accompanies urgency-imbued vocabularies of crisis and emergency. Whether boredom is a refusal to face climate change, or a way of coping with and inhabiting the overwhelming, being bored with climate change allows existing attachments to fossil-fuelled lives and futures to continue. The event of climate change is ‘suspended’, in the sense that it is no longer affectively present. I distinguish this relation of ‘climate change suspension’ from two other ways of detaching from the event of climate change – ‘climate change denial’ and ‘climate change delay’. Unlike in denial or delay, in suspension the demand of climate change is held in abeyance, not ended. It returns in ways that blur the line between boredom and other affects. In conclusion, I reflect on the affective politics of climate change, and wonder about how boredom could become part of a progressive politics of climate change.

<p>In 2018, the UN estimated that around 55% of the world’s population currently live within urban areas, with this value projected to rise to 60% by 2030 (United Nations, 2018). High levels of urbanisation, coupled with an increasing trend in extreme weather under future climate change scenarios, combine to create significant challenges to increasing urban resilience for the future (Masson et al., 2020).</p><p>Urban climate services provide tools to support decision making at a range of scales across the city, from day-to-day operations to informing urban design over longer timescales (Grimmond et al., 2015). Whilst urban climate services may be developed at a range of scales (Grimmond et al., 2020), this presentation looks at a prototype climate service which provides long-term climate change projections at the city-specific scale. The ‘City Pack’ was developed through a process of co-production, in which project development aims to move away from a one-way push of scientific information, to a two-way collaborative process of knowledge construction and sharing (Vincent et al., 2019).</p><p>This ‘City Pack’ service was co-developed by the Met Office and Bristol City Council following an assessment of the Council’s climate information needs. The City Pack comprises of three non-technical factsheets which explain how the climate of Bristol has changed and will continue to change into the 21<sup>st</sup> Century based on the UKCP climate projections. The City Pack’s primary aims are to raise awareness of how a cities climate may change in the future and to inform the development of city resilience whilst also providing a tool to be used by city stakeholders to raise awareness of climate change across the council. The audience for the City Pack therefore includes city officials, city planners and the general public. The Bristol City Pack has since provided an evidence base for the Bristol City Council Climate Change Risk Assessment and informed Bristol’s Climate Strategy. In addition, the City Pack has been used to engage with the council’s wider stakeholders and also as a communication and training tool. As such, whilst the co-production of a climate service may be time and resource intensive, the process may also be rewarded with the production of a highly tailored and user-relevant tool.</p><p>Following the success of the prototype ‘City Pack’ service for Bristol City Council, the Met Office are continuing to produce City Packs for additional cities across the UK, and also in China. The project is seeking to ascertain if services which are co-produced with and bespoke to one set of stakeholders, may provide an equally valuable service for other cities and if so, how can we make these services scalable.</p>

Climate services (CS) are generally recognized as potentially effective tools to communicate climate-related risks to the general public, end-users and other stakeholders. However, empirical evidence indicates that there often is a gap in understanding between the producers of the CS and those that are meant to use them. It is therefore crucial to place the stakeholders in the centre of the process of CS-production to identify their actual needs. Facilitating iterative and collaborative processes that allow stakeholders to provide feedback bridges the process-content gap. This leads to an improvement of each step in the production of CS, and ultimately, helps building engaged communities.One way of minimising the gap between providers and users of CS, is to incorporate evaluations in the co-production process. Our paper presents the evaluation of the co-production of CS at two case study sites, Larvik, Norway and Flensburg, Germany. The study illustrates how the stakeholders are involved in the development of the CS and specifically the use of questionnaires for evaluating the CS as well as the co-production process of developing these CS in the case study sites.These results indicate that the Living Lab workshops, and the active use of questionnaires followed by evaluation, facilitates a more iterative process of developing CS by better involving stakeholders within the co-production of CS. Adequately addressing stakeholder needs and the usability of CS are also essential within the CS co-production process as these aspects give an indication to the uptake of CS to support climate adaptation planning outcomes and longer-term longevity that support climate adaptation policy and ultimately societal impacts.