Climate Resilience in Diverse African Contexts:

Co-Creating Knowledge∞Action networks

Climares is a consortium of 7 African, 7 Dutch universities, and societal partners that works with dozens of researchers and actors in DRC, Mozambique, Morocco, Senegal and Uganda to investigate and address climate threats for at-risk populations in a range of governance and socioeconomic contexts in these countries.

Climares focuses on agricultural smallholders, fisherfolk, urban outdoor workers, pastoralists and displaced people. All these groups have high vulnerability to  climate change. Moreover, these groups represent a large share of African populations. Climares supports these populations to know how weather patterns and climate change will impact their – already precarious or threatened – livelihoods and solicit appropriate responses. Through participatory digital and in person research, co-created climate storylines and advocacy methods, Climares enables that weather and climate information becomes meaningful and actionable.
Climares investigates climate threats for at-risk populations in a variety of climatic zones, socioeconomic contexts, and institutional climate response conditions. It aims to support the agency and resilience of communities by creating and supporting Knowledge∞Action (K∞A) networks. These networks are composed of all stakeholders that have an interest in the resilience of a population group, including affected communities.

What is Climares about?
There are many initiatives – through weather stations, satellite imaging and machine learning – to improve climate data availability in Africa. What remains a  challenge is to know what the changing weather will do for at-risk populations and how early action and adaptation can effectively build on people’s resilience needs and strategies. Climate change works through, and often multiplies, other risks that people face. This complicates early action and adaptation. To deal
with this, Climares works with specific population groups that have problems and interests in common. These are smallholders, fisherfolk, pastoralists, urban precarious construction workers and street vendors, as well as displaced populations. These groups have often formed community-based organizations to  advance their interests, and these will be key partners for Climares.

Knowledge∞Action networks
Governments, especially at the local level, usually do not have the resources to protect populations against climate change. At-risk communities are too vulnerable to cope by themselves, despite their local knowledge and resilience strategies. Dealing with climate change therefore requires the involvement of multiple  stakeholders. In the case of smallholders, for example, stakeholders may include commercial parties like seed providers and traders, NGOs developing projects to improve agriculture, research institutes and the ministry of agriculture. Climares aims to organize and support these actors in K∞A networks that will become vehicles for the needs-based co-production of weather and climate information services and translate this information into action for better resilience strategies.

Although stakeholders have varied interests and power positions, they share an interest in the population group’s resilience which provides an incentive to  participate in a K∞A network for joint learning, analysis, planning, resource mobilization and advocacy. By working across five countries and with five populations, Climares will generate knowledge that is relevant for other contexts and populations. By working with 11 K∞A networks Climares will yield insights in the factors that help or hinder such networks, which will lead to a model approach that can be applied beyond the areas where Climares works.

How will Climares work with Knowledge∞Action networks?
Climares will have a duration of 6 years and is divided into three phases. The first two-year phase focuses on community-based research, the formation of K∞A networks and the mapping of existing weather and climate information services and capacities. Community-based research will combine participatory in-depth
research with the use of digital engagement platforms. These ensure that the voices and insights of communities will be predominant throughout Climares and that the population groups will be the main agents in the design of early action and adaptation. In this, Climares will be sensitive to diversities and inequalities found within different population groups, for example on the basis of gender, age, and access to resources.

In the second two-year phase, Climares will continue to work with the communities and K∞A networks and will strengthen the abilities of weather and climate actors to support communities with adequate data. Different data sets will be combined for the co-creation of climate storylines. Climate change scenarios usually provide several possible outcomes of how the weather will change. Climate storylines translate these outcomes in what the changing weather will do and how this can lead to action.

The final phase of Climares will be dedicated to making the K∞A networks self-reliant, refine improved weather information services and most importantly  generate action to strengthen the resilience strategies of the population groups. Throughout Climares, a dedicated working group will ensure that relevant information from global and international platforms will be available for the K∞A networks while, vice-versa, insights from Climares will be brought to these platforms. There will be two Climares conferences organized around global or international climate events