Factoring climate information into investments and planning decisions is vital

Factoring climate information into the design and implementation of investments and planning decisions is vital to climate-resilient development. Despite the uncertainties associated with it, climate information can support households, communities and nations in making informed decisions on future investments. This data can come in many forms, from short-term seasonal forecasts to long-term multi-decadal climate projections. This information is packaged up in different types of climate services, tailored for different decision making contexts.

Climate services should ensure that the best available climate information is communicated to agriculture, water, health and other sectors, so that they can develop and assess mitigation and adaptation strategies. Accessible, timely and relevant scientific information can help society to cope with current climate variability and limit the economic and social damage caused by climate-related disasters. Climate services also allow society to build resilience to future change and take advantage of opportunities provided by favourable conditions.

Importantly, promoting the use of climate services requires not only improvements to the underlying science of the climate and interactions between the atmosphere, land and oceans, but also support for more effective communication as well as its integration within existing governance and institutional arrangements. Thus enhancing climate services is as much about improving our understanding of social, behavioural and political phenomena as it is about the natural sciences.

Nowhere are these challenges more apparent than in sub-Saharan African and South Asia: two regions that face high exposure to climate risks (both current and future) as well as limited observational networks. In addition, weak scientific understanding of the regional drivers of climate dynamics (at various timescales) compared with other regions (such as North America and Europe) and low capacity to generate and disseminate regionally relevant climate information, limit the use of climate services for resilience-building activities in these contexts.

A number of different sub-themes have been proposed by the KM research team, drawing on knowledge gaps, areas of focus in the BRACED projects, as well as a literature review and identification of good practices:

• Longer-term climate information (i.e. multi-decadal climate projections) has not been embedded into planned NGO activities, but it is central to effective long-term decision making and adaptation planning, so how can use of this information be incentivised?
•  The need to account for uncertainty in climate change impacts, and how uncertainty can be factored into the discussion, dissemination and use of climate information.
•  The roles of boundary agents and how they can be used more effectively to share and communicate information.
•  The role that the private sector could play in the generation, interpretation and dissemination of climate information as well as the potential for partnership to identify climate change risks, response measures, and adaptation need to be further explored.
•  The dissemination of early warning information to end-users: how recent advances in ICT and other technologies can be leveraged to expand the scope, scale and effectiveness of EWSs.