Societal local and regional resiliency spurred by contextualized climate services: The role of culture in co-production

Abstract

Climate information plays a foundational role in achieving a green recovery and climate neutrality in Europe, and a central one for a climate resilient Europe. This role can materialize if climate information is delivered appropriately and used effectively. Climate services, understood as the provision of climate information for use in decision making, have been created to provide climate information addressing these aspects. The utility of climate services is determined by the level of user engagement and co-design, employed during their development, while resource limitations for any of these aspects constrain their full potential. Co-design together with users is increasingly seen as a necessary good practice approach to provide efficient services that bring together supply and demand. In this paper, we focus on how climate services can contribute to climate neutrality by considering the cultural dimension of the users and their regions for whom specific climate services are co-designed. We specifically address dimensions of vulnerability and resilience to changing climatic conditions in five case studies worldwide while analysing the influence of culture on risk coping and enabling mechanism of key stakeholders and their needs for specific climate services in these regions. We found that user needs, desires and actions hinge on value prepositions formed by specific socio-cultural, climatic, spatial and bio-ecological contexts. Hence, when co-designing climate services, it is vital to understand users’ needs, based on their values and experiences with climate and weather and to seek ways to influence, alter and change them.