Background and Rationale

From WikiADAPT

Responding to climate change requires new ways of thinking and doing. The Frontline Knowledge Express has evolved from a meeting of climate change knowledge service providers committed to developing new ways of working together and with others to meet the challenges of climate change.

We want to explore:

• how we might go about generating knowledge together through reflecting on our collective experiences and thinking; and
• what might be generated by doing this.

Why?

Climate change is one of those complex challenges we face that affects us all and that we will all need to be part of tackling. People have been adapting to changes in the climate (natural variability) but due to our influences on the climate system, through activities that result in the emission of greenhouse gases, the changes are deviating from what they would otherwise have been (human-induced or anthropogenic climate change). We now not only know that but we also know something about what those changes in the climate are and will be in the future. This puts us in a position to learn from what we and others have done in the past to respond to climate (mixed in with other factors), to act on climate change accordingly and in turn to reflect and learn from these experiences and act again... ad infinitum. Instead of doing this only individually or independently we see value in and a need for doing this more collectively and concertedly, not just the acting but the learning too. Some are calling this Social learning. You could think of it as everyone holding a piece of the puzzle, and by sharing those pieces then the bigger picture becomes clear.

So...

How about we pose ourselves some questions that we can together begin to try and answer. Maybe we will reach consensus on some, maybe we'll bring to light some conflict over others, maybe we'll come up with new questions to answer. Through this written dialogue and debate we can hopefully facilitate some social learning of our own and showcase one way of doing so in other contexts.

We are thinking of this as a test in using the wiki as a tool for facilitating this learning and co-production of knowledge. The outcome(s) we hope may prove to be useful in and of itself and the strength of this is reliant on our willingness to:

   * try a new technology, which may initially be scary and discomforting
   * find time
   * trust, both the process and the people
   * use our voice (or keyboard!), share, contribute, put it out there
   * be inclusive
   * teach and learn
   * edit and be edited
   * walk the line between collaboration and competition... generating creativity at the edge of chaos

In order to make this doable we thought it would be useful to start by tackling a manageable chunk of the climate change 'thing'. Hopefully it is a chunk that is broad enough to give lots of us the sense that we have something to contribute, but targeted enough that it doesn't overwhelm us and we can each find a point of entry. Who knows how it might grow or change as we get going, that's part of the experiment. We are initiating the engagement around looking at the nexus between climate adaptation and disaster risk management. Let's see where we get to!