Abstract
Scientists need to acknowledge the inherent social contexts that drive the scientific process if they want their research to improve complex societal problems such as vulnerability to climate change. Social interactions and relationships are essential elements for conducting use-inspired research, creating usable knowledge, and providing climate services. The Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) program was founded on theories of use-inspired research and co-producing knowledge with non-academic partners. A recent program evaluation illuminated gaps in these underlying program models and led to the inclusion of social learning systems theory and communities of practice. Using grounded examples, we demonstrate the CLIMAS program’s ongoing role in fostering, maintaining, and expanding a climate resilience social learning system in the U.S. Southwest. Broader implications from the evaluation focus on the importance of establishing and maintaining relationships, increasing institutional and individual flexibility in response to change, and improving the practice of transdisciplinarity. These findings inform new program evaluation metrics and data collection techniques. This paper contributes to current theory and practice of use-inspired science and climate services by identifying and demonstrating how social interactions inform climate knowledge production. The reconceptualization of the CLIMAS program as part of a growing regional social learning system serves as an example for similar types of programs. We encourage climate services and use-inspired research programs to explore applications of this framework to their own operations.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
All authors of this paper are members of the CLIMAS team and receive funding from the CLIMAS program through the Climate Program Office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Wenger’s conceptualization of social learning systems and communities of practice emerges from information science and anthropology, but has been applied in several fields, including health, education, and business management.
References
Adger WN, Brown K, Nelson DR et al (2011) Resilience implications of policy responses to climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2:757–766
Agrawala S, Broad K, Guston D (2001) Integrating climate forecasts and societal decision making: challenges to an emergent boundary organization. Sci Technol Hum Values 26(4):454–477
Amaru S, Chhetri NB (2013) Climate adaptation: institutional response to environmental constraints, and the need for increased flexibility, participation, and integration of approaches. Appl Geogr 39:128–139
Bales R, Finan T, Hughes M et al (1997) Variability, social vulnerability, and public policy in the southwestern United States. Proposal to NOAA Office of Global Programs
Bales R, Liverman DM, Morehouse BJ (2004) Integrated assessment as a step toward reducing climate vulnerability in the southwestern United States. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 85(11):1727–1734
Beier P, Hansen LJ, Helbrecht L, Behar D (2017) A how-to guide for coproduction of actionable science. Conserv Lett 10(3):288–296
Berkes F (2009) Evolution of co-management: role of knowledge generation, bridging organizations and social learning. J Environ Manag 90:1692–1702
Biagioli M (ed) (1999) The science studies reader. Routledge, New York
Brasseur G, Gallardo L (2016) Climate services: lessons learned and future prospects. Earth Future 4:79–89
Brown HE, Roach M, Smith GR et al (2016) Assessment of climate and health impacts on vector-borne diseases and valley fever in Arizona. Report to Arizona Department of Health Services
Brown HE, Barrera R, Comrie AC, Lega J (2017) Effect of temperature thresholds on modeled Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) population dynamics. J Med Entomol 54(4):869–877
Cash DW, Clark WC, Alcock F et al (2003) Knowledge systems for sustainable development. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 100(14):8086–8091
Caswell C, Shove E (2000) Introducing interactive social science. Sci Public Policy 27(3):154–157
Clark WC, van Kerkhoff L, Lebel L, Gallopin GC (2016) Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 113(17):4570–4578
Collins K, Ison R (2009) Jumping off Arnstein's ladder: social learning as a new policy paradigm for climate change adaptation. Environ Policy Governance 19:358–373
Corell RW, Liverman D, Dow K et al (2014) Ch. 29: research needs for climate and global change assessments. In: Melillo JM et al (eds) Climate change impacts in the United States: the third national climate assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, pp 707–718
Cornell S, Berkhout S, Tuinstra W et al (2013) Opening up knowledge systems for better responses to global environmental change. Environ Sci Pol 28:60–70
Dilling L, Lemos MC (2011) Creating usable science: opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy. Glob Environ Chang 21(2):680–689
Fazey I, Bunse L, Msika J et al (2014) Evaluating knowledge exchange in interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder research. Glob Environ Chang 25:204–220
Feldman D, Ingram H (2009) Making science useful to decision makers: climate forecasts, water management, and knowledge networks. Weather Clim Soc 1(1):9–21
Ferguson DB, Finucane ML, Keener VW, Owen G (2016) Evaluation to advance science policy: lessons from Pacific RISA and CLIMAS. In: Parris A et al (eds) Climate in context. Wiley, Oxford, pp 215–233
Fernandez-Gimenez ME, Ballard HL, Sturtevant VE (2008) Adaptive management and social learning in collaborative and community-based forestry organizations in the western USA. Ecol Soc 13(2):4–23
Folke C, Hahn T, Olsson P, Norberg J (2005) Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems. Annu Rev Environ Resour 30:441–473
Funnell SC, Rogers PJ (2011) Purposeful program theory: effective use of theories of change and logic models. Wiley, San Francisco
Funtowicz SO, Ravetz JR (1993) Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25:739–755
Gibbons M, Limoges C, Nowotny H et al (1994) The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. Sage Publications, London
Guido Z, Hill D, Crimmins MA, Ferguson DB (2013) Informing decisions with a climate synthesis product: implications for regional climate services. Weather Clim Soc 5:83–92
Guiterman CH (2015) Climatic sensitivities of Navajo forestlands: use-inspired research to guide tribal forest management. Report for Climate & Society Fellowship http://www.climas.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/pdfclimas-fellow-finalreport2014guiterman.pdf
Guston DH (2000) Between politics and science: assuring the integrity and productivity of research. Cambridge University Press, New York
Guston DH (2001) Boundary organizations in environmental policy and science: an introduction. Sci Technol Hum Values 26(4):399–408
Head B (2008) Wicked problems in public policy. Publ Pol 3(2):101–118
Hewitt CD, Mason S, Walland D (2012) The global framework for climate services. Nat Clim Chang 2:831–832
Hewitt CD, Stone RC, Tait AB (2017) Improving the use of climate information in decision-making. Nat Clim Chang 7:614–616
Jahn T, Bergmann M, Keil F (2012) Transdisciplinarity: between mainstreaming and marginalization. Ecol Econ 79:1–10
Jasanoff S, Markle G, Petersen J, Pinch T (eds) (1995) Handbook of science and technology studies. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks
Kirchhoff C, Lemos MC, Dessai S (2013) Actionable knowledge for environmental decision-making broadening the usability of climate science. Annu Rev Environ Resour 38:393–414
Lega J, Brown HE, Barrera R (2017) Aedes aegypti (Diptera: Culicidae) abundance model improved with relative humidity and precipitation-driven egg hatching. J Med Entomol 54(5):1375–1384
Lemos MC, Morehouse BJ (2005) The co-production of science and policy in integrated climate assessments. Glob Environ Chang 15(1):57–68
Lemos MC, Kirchhoff CJ, Ramprasad V (2012) Narrowing the climate information usability gap. Nat Clim Chang 2:789–794
Liverman DM, Merideth R (2002) Climate and society in the US Southwest: the context for a regional assessment. Clim Res 21:199–218
Lourenço TC, Swart R, Goosen H, Street R (2016) The rise of demand-driven climate services. Nat Clim Chang 6:13–14
Mauser W, Klepper G, Rice M et al (2013) Transdisciplinary global change research: the co-creation of knowledge for sustainability. Curr Opin Environ Sustain 5(3–4):420–431
McNie E (2008) Co-producing useful climate science for policy: lessons from the RISA program. Dissertation, University of Colorado
McNie E (2013) Delivering climate services: organizational strategies and approaches for producing useful climate-science information. Weather Clim Soc 5:14–26
McNie E, Parris A, Sarewitz D (2016) Improving the public value of science: a typology to inform discussion, design and implementation of research. Res Policy 45:884–895
Meadow AM (2017) An ethnohistory of the NOAA RISA program. University of Arizona
Meadow AM, Ferguson DB, Guido Z et al (2015) Moving toward the deliberate co-production of climate science knowledge. Weather Clim Soc 7:179–191
Meadow AM, Guido Z, Crimmins MA, McLeod J (2016) From principles to actions: applying the National Research Council’s principles for effective decision support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s watch office. Clim Serv 1:12–23
Miles EL, Snover AK, Whitely-Binder LC et al (2006) An approach to designing a national climate service. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103(52):19616–19623
Moser SC, Boykoff MT (eds) (2013) Successful adaptation to climate change: linking science and policy in a rapidly changing world. Routledge, New York
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) (2017) Graduate training in the social and behavioral sciences. The National Academies Press
Nelson DR, Adger WN, Brown K (2007) Adaptation to environmental change: contributions of a resilience framework. Annu Rev Environ Resour 32:395–419
Nowotny H, Scott P, Gibbons M (2001) Re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Polity Press, Cambridge
Pahl-Wostl C, Hare M (2004) Processes of social learning in integrated resources management. J Community Appl Soc Psychol 14:193–206
Pahl-Wostl C, Craps M, Dewulf A et al (2007) Social learning and water resources management. Ecol Soc 12(2):5–19
Pelling M, High C, Dearing J, Smith D (2008) Shadow spaces for social learning: a relational understanding of adaptive capacity to climate change within organisations. Environ Plan 40:867–884
Pohl C, Krütli P, Stauffacher M (2017) Ten reflective steps for rendering research societally relevant. GAIA—Ecol Perspective Sci Soc 26(1):43–51
Preston BL, Westaway R, Dessai S, Smith T (2009) Are we adapting to climate change? Research and methods for evaluating progress. Shafer, MA et al (eds) 89th American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix
Roach M, Barrett E, Brown HE et al (2017) Arizona’s climate and health adaptation plan: a report prepared for the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention climate-ready states and cities initiative http://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-control/extreme-weather/index.php#news-publications
Serrao-Neumann S, Coudrain A (2018) Science and knowledge production for climate change adaptation: challenges and opportunities. In: Serrao-Neumann S, Coudrain A, Coulter L (eds) Communicating climate change information for decision-making. Springer, Geneva
Simpson CF, Dilling L, Dow K et al (2016) Assessing needs and decision contexts: RISA approaches to engagement research. In: Parris AS et al (eds) Climate in context. Wiley, Oxford, pp 3–26
Stokes DE (1997) Pasteur’s quadrant: basic science and technological innovation. Brookings Institute Press, Washington DC
Van Kerkhoff L, Szlezák N (2006) Linking local knowledge with global action: examining the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria through a knowledge system lens. Bull World Health Organ 84(8):629–635
Vaughn C, Dessai S (2014) Climate services for society: origins, institutional arrangements, and design elements for an evaluation framework. WIREs Clim Change 5(5):587–603
Vogel C, Moser S, Kasperson R, Dabelko G (2007) Linking vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience science to practice: pathways, players, and partnerships. Glob Environ Chang 17:349–364
Wall TU, Meadow AM, Horangic A (2017) Developing evaluation indicators to improve the process of coproducing usable climate science. Weather Clim Soc 9:95–107
Weichselgartner J, Truffer B (2015) From knowledge co-production to transdisciplinary research: lessons from the quest to produce socially robust knowledge. In: Werlen B (ed) Global sustainability: cultural perspectives and challenges for transdisciplinary integrated research. Springer, Geneva, pp 89–106
Wenger E (1998) Communities of practice; learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Wenger E (2000) Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization 7(2):225–246
Wenger E (2010) Communities of practice and social learning systems: the career of a concept. In: Social learning systems and communities of practice. Springer-Verlag, London, pp179–198
Wilder M, Scott C, Pineda Pablos N et al (2010) Adapting across boundaries: climate change, social learning and resilience in the U.S.-Mexico border region. Ann Assoc Am Geogr 100:917–928
Woolgar S (2000) Social basis of interactive social science. Sci Public Policy 27(3):165–173
World Meteorological Organization (WMO) (2018) Step-by-step guidelines for establishing a National Framework for climate services. WMO, Geneva
Acknowledgements
We thank our anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program through grants NA12OAR4310124 and NA17OAR4310288 with the Climate Assessment for the Southwest program at the University of Arizona.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
G.O. and D.F. designed the evaluation. G.O. collected and analyzed evaluation data. G.O., D.F., and B.M. conceptualized and wrote the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
“Putting Climate Services in Contexts: Advancing Multi-disciplinary Understandings” edited by Sophie Webber
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Owen, G., Ferguson, D.B. & McMahan, B. Contextualizing climate science: applying social learning systems theory to knowledge production, climate services, and use-inspired research. Climatic Change 157, 151–170 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02466-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02466-x