9 pages., via online journal., High-quality weather and climate services (WCS) can be critical for communicating knowledge about current and future weather and climate risks for adaptation and disaster risk management in the agricultural sector. This paper investigates the structure and performance of weather and climate services for farmers from a governance perspective. Empirically the paper compares the institutional design and operations of agro-meteorological services in Maharashtra/India and Norway through a ‘most different case study’ approach. The two cases were selected to represent great diversity in location, scale and institutional design. A governance approach based on semi-direct interviews and policy and institutional analysis was combined with local survey data of farmers’ perceptions and use of the services. Despite the fact that the context for the two agromet advisory services was very different from a climate-weather, eco-agriculture and socio-institutional angle, the analysis reveals great similarities in the services structures and critical governance challenges. In both countries the agromet services communicated knowledge that was largely perceived not to be well tailored to farmers’ needs for decisions in specific crops- and farm operations, spatially too coarse to address local issues, and, often unreliable or inaccurate in terms of the quality of data. Farmers did, however, respond positively to specific and locally relevant information on e.g., warnings about high rainfall and spread of pests. Observing such similarities across very diverse contexts enhances the generalization potential, precisely because they evolved under very different circumstances. Similar observations find support in the wider WCS literature. Based on the empirical findings, we propose a more deliberate approach to institutional design of WCS in order to enhance governance performance and co-creation of the services at local, district and national scales. It is suggested that greater participation of farmers and agricultural extension agents in the co-creation of these services is a necessary means of improving the services, supported by the WCS literature. However, we insist that greater participation is only likely to materialize if the deficiencies in institutional design and knowledge quality and relevance are addressed to greater extent than done today. The comparison between the two services shows that Norway can learn from India that a more ambitious scope and multiple forms of communication, including the use of social media/WhatsApp groups, can facilitate greater awareness and interest among farmers in multi-purpose agromet services for multi-way communication. India can learn from Norway that a more integrated and decentralized institutional design can strengthen the network attributes of the services, foster co-creation, and improve participation of both poor and large-scale farmers and extension agents.
7 pages., Via online journal., Recent GHG emissions trends are in stark contrast with the Paris Agreement’s target to hold the increase in average global warming to “well below 2 °C and pursue efforts to stay below 1,5 °C” by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times. This disconnect has further unveiled the limitations of current knowledge production and communication processes in Southern European countries, where fast institutional changes are needed to address the potential impacts as well as the opportunities for transformation derived from High-End Climate Change (HECC). The prevailing knowledge deficit-model – aimed at producing ‘more knowledge’ about climate impacts, vulnerabilities and long-term scenarios to decision makers – has long proven inadequate in tackling the many complexities of the present socio-climate quandary. The growing emphasis on assessing and implementing concrete solutions, demand new and more complex forms of agent interactions in the production, framing, communication and use of climate knowledge; and in particular, explicit procedures able to tackle difficult normative questions regarding assessment of solutions and the allocation of individual and collective responsibilities. To explore these challenges, we analyse the views of 30 Spanish knowledge contributors and users of the latest UN IPCC AR5 report and share the insights gained from the implementation of a participatory Integrated Assessment procedure aimed at developing innovative solutions to high-end climate scenarios in Iberia. Our analysis supports the view of the need to institutionalise transformation, and in particular underlines the potential role that transformative climate boundary organisations could play to address such difficult ethical choices in different contexts of action.
