User Selection and Engagement for Climate Services Coproduction

Abstract

Abstract Climate services are high on the international agenda for their potential to help combat the effects of climate change. However, climate science is rarely directly incorporated into the decision-making processes of societal actors, due to what has been identified as the usability gap. This gap is partially due to a failure to timely and meaningfully engage users in the production of climate services, as well as misperceptions as to which users can best benefit from climate service uptake. In this article, we propose user selection and engagement guidelines that integrate important values from participatory science such as those of legitimacy, representativity, and agency. The guidelines consist of 5 + 1 steps: defining why, where, whom, which attributes, and which intensity and how to select and engage with stakeholders. While these steps may be initially implemented by an ideally interdisciplinary team of scientists and service designers, the final step consists of an iterative process by which each decision is agreed on together with the identified users and stakeholders under a coproduction approach. We believe this systematic user selection and engagement practice is key to support the design of climate services aligned to the actual needs of a wide and inclusive range of empowered societal agents. Significance Statement A review of the climate science and services literature and related research projects reveals that, despite the insistence to include users in all stages of the research process, users are often involved only sporadically and inconsistently and when there is little room to change the climate service suitable for decision-making. Here, we argue that a reason for this is the lack of user selection and engagement guidelines. Failure to implement a research design strategy for these decisions can lead to a lack of usability and applicability of the produced climate-related services, as well as hampering their long-term uptake. These guidelines can thus support the development of usable, coproduced, actionable climate science.