14 Pgs., Although climate information can aid farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change, its accessibility and adoption by subsistence farmers hinge on the collaboration between farmers and climate information providers. This paper examines collaborations among actors in the process of climate information production and dissemination in the Namibian agricultural sector. The aim is to investigate the extent to which subsistence farmers are integrated into the collaboration process and the impact of the collaboration on the nature and accessibility of disseminated information. Key informant interviews and a questionnaire survey were used for data collection. Using network analysis, we estimated the networks’ density, clustering coefficient, and degree centrality. The study found that both the climate information production and dissemination networks have a high overall clustering coefficient (78% and 77%, respectively) suggesting a high rate of collaboration among the actors in the networks. However, the frequency of interactions between the actors in both the information production and dissemination networks and subsistence farmers remains very low. Nearly all surveyed farmers reported that they meet with information providers only once in a year. The effect of this poor interaction is reflected in the poor occurrence of feedback learning, which is needed to optimize channels of information dissemination to subsistence farmers and enhance the robustness of disseminated information. We recommend innovative communication means via mobile phone, promotion of peer-to-peer learning, flexible collaboration relations with more space for feedback from the users of climate information, and more attention to long-term forecasts and their implications for adaptive actions.
10 pages., via online journal., Uncertainty, insufficient information or information of poor quality, limited cognitive capacity and time, along with value conflicts and ethical considerations, are all aspects that make risk management and risk communication difficult. This paper provides a review of different risk concepts and describes how these influence risk management, communication and planning in relation to forest ecosystem services. Based on the review and results of empirical studies, we suggest that personal assessment of risk is decisive in the management of forest ecosystem services. The results are used together with a review of different principles of the distribution of risk to propose an approach to risk communication that is effective as well as ethically sound. Knowledge of heuristics and mutual information on both beliefs and desires are important in the proposed risk communication approach. Such knowledge provides an opportunity for relevant information exchange, so that gaps in personal knowledge maps can be filled in and effective risk communication can be promoted.