全球变化知识资源中心

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If the research produced by the IPCC WGII, and the adaptation community more generally, is to be fully utilized in practice, we strongly recommend that the IPCC and other official assessment processes engage with practitioner communities by integrating them in the design, and writing, of assessments — in this way the language, style and results can meet the needs of the end user.

As a simple example, practitioners from the engineering community understand the term resilience much more than adaptation — engineers strive to build infrastructure and systems that are 'resilient' to various shocks. We recommend that this term takes primacy over the term adaptation.

Practitioners can actively contribute to the participatory approach needed for building climate resilience. Such a participatory process would allow the co-production of knowledge to support decision-makers⁵. Furthermore, as an ongoing process, it would allow the management and adjustment of expectations about how the research undertaken by practitioners can be incorporated through the process, from research design, review and policy information. Incorporating practitioners' experience at the outset of the process would help to understand how to assess, measure and reduce unanticipated costs as well as address contentious issues such as risk and uncertainty. Practitioners are used to working under uncertainty and risk in many different contexts (including cultural, geographical and political), where flexibility through use of cost–benefit analyses is a standard practice. This process would benefit the IPCC WGII by widening the pool of research and practical solutions covered, making the reviews more relevant to decision-makers and by incorporation of more transparent language and terminology (such as climate change resilience) in future assessments.

The IPCC process provides the most compelling account of evidence about climate science through the working group reports and yet, the forthcoming Synthesis Report would benefit significantly from incorporation of practitioner experience of climate solutions implementation. Co-production of knowledge, across academic, political and practitioner communities, would frame, structure and deliver climate action. Such a process will ensure that future IPCC reports are more up-to-date, robust and complete in their analysis and that the climate change resilience solutions proposed incorporate the most practically viable research.