1. Introduction
“It became obvious . . . that neither decision makers nor scientists working alone can specify what science products are needed, how they should be developed, and how they should be applied to climate adaptation” (Beier et al. 2017, p. 289).
Climate services demand is on the rise as a result of increasing awareness of the negative effects of climate change and the need for evidence-based responses (Street et al. 2019). Globally, a wide range of institutions foster the climate services market, from the World Meteorological Organization and its Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) launched in 2009 to other initiatives such as the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) (Bojovic et al. 2022). The C3S, for instance, aims to build a climate-resilient society by engaging a large number of experts on developing, distributing, and using climate services, ensuring the quality of climate data and eliminating obstacles impeding its usage (Buontempo et al. 2020).
Among the obstacles identified that impede the use of climate data, scholars mention cognitive, social, institutional, and knowledge barriers (Dilling and Lemos 2011; Kalafatis et al. 2015; Raaphorst et al. 2020). As an outcome of these obstacles, scholars have noticed that whereas the quality of climate services has been increasing, its usage by societal actors has not followed suit (Findlater et al. 2021). To address this gap, global scientific networks have suggested a change in paradigm in the way of producing climate- and sustainability-related science. These actors promote the adoption of knowledge coproduction processes to enhance scientific accountability toward society and ensure implementation of the scientific activity, while including different knowledge types in designing climate-related policy and strategies (van der Hel 2016; Owen et al. 2019; McCauley and Heffron 2018; Bremer et al. 2019).
Users are at the center of climate services by definition as, despite the wide range of products they encompass, climate services are identified by the key commonalities of being guided by users’ needs, providing climate information for decision-making processes, and involving dissemination and uptake practices (Bessembinder et al. 2019). Targeting the inclusion of diverse actors at key stages of the coproduction process increases the chances of producing actionable knowledge that will be incorporated into decision-making (Armitage et al. 2009; Beier et al. 2017; Hill et al. 2020). In reality, nonetheless, few examples put this into practice (Vaughan et al. 2018). Most projects adopt rather supply-driven forms of producing services with the risk of not meeting users’ needs (Buontempo and Hewitt 2018; Daniels et al. 2020; Findlater et al. 2021; Hewitt et al. 2020; Lemos and Morehouse 2005; Porter and Dessai 2017).
In this article, we adapt the methodology of stakeholder analysis to the particularities of climate services. Our aim is to build on existing work that maps climate service stakeholders (Barquet et al. 2022) and to propose a methodology for enhanced user selection and engagement that increases the likelihood that climate information is incorporated in decision-making processes and considers the needs from different types of users, because currently there is a lack of guidance, especially on systematically selecting a plurality of users. This is usually exacerbated by climate scientists’ perceptions of users in the “mini me” phenomenon, by which scientists expect users to have the same background despite this rarely being the case (Porter and Dessai 2017).
Knowledge coproduction is a participatory approach to science, and many such approaches depart from a set of principles infusing the range of methods through which they are implemented on the ground. The principles this guide aims to be infused with are those of valuing, equality, authenticity, transparency, agency, representation, deliberation, inclusion, and transdisciplinarity (Reed et al. 2018) [for ethical principles in coproduction and transdisciplinary research, see also Wilmer et al. (2021)]. Inclusive research practices are very important; the better job we make in the selection of users that include a variety of identities, backgrounds, and knowledge, the better foundation we lay down for designing services that are accessible, welcoming, safe, ethical, and inclusive for everyone. These principles have been linked to the steps proposed below, but they should represent the overarching theme in the climate services field throughout. In the next section, we give an overview of the stakeholder analysis literature, followed by the proposed steps for stakeholder and user selection and engagement. In the discussion, we dive into ways to successfully navigate the challenges that can occur during this process.
2. Adapting stakeholder analysis to climate services
Stakeholder analysis matured in the management literature in the 1980s, with the recognition that engaging actors external to an organization was critical to the very survival of the organization [for a review of stakeholder analysis definitions, see Yang (2014)]. From this literature emerged the most often cited definition of stakeholder, understood as “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” (Freeman 2010, p. 46). In the 1990s, evidence that the governance of natural resources was increasingly adopting hybrid regulatory, market, and network-led forms of governance raised interest from scholars in tailoring this organizational science to the issues faced in natural resource management. Natural resource management and climate services have some elements in common, such as the complexity of the issue at stake, the general initial disconnection between involved stakeholders, and a context of human–environment interactions (Beier et al. 2017). However, the particularities of climate information and services create the need to narrow down stakeholder analysis methodologies through a human-centered approach as proposed below.
Buontempo et al. (2020, appendix 1) define a climate services stakeholder as “an individual or an organisation who is interested in the project and who has a critical decision which can be informed by climate information.” As it subsequently follows, stakeholder analysis for climate information is the process that (i) identifies individuals, groups, and organizations who can benefit from using a climate service; (ii) prioritizes these individuals and groups for involvement in the climate service coproduction process; and (iii) defines a climate service that can be of support to their decision or action. For instance, in the context of flood risk management in a local area of Germany, Reimann et al. (2021) mapped disaster-impacted societal actors who represented different interests and invited them to codesign a climate service to inform adaptation decisions for coastal flooding. The activities conducted to identify and engage with these stakeholders encompass the process of stakeholder analysis. The extent to which the stakeholder might become a user is part of the steps in the guidelines.
This involvement, especially for climate services, may take a holistic and human-centered approach, as is increasingly being introduced in climate services through service design. Service design involves the practice of engaging with users and creating efficient user experiences, by making the users and stakeholders part of the whole life cycle of the service and products. It uses methods from different disciplines to solve problems by first cocreating better service definitions that begin with understanding human needs and then codesigning solutions to address them. Human-centered design cultivates deep empathy with the people who will be interacting with the service, both end-users and stakeholders, as a requirement of usable climate services (Christel et al. 2018; Terrado et al. 2022).
Next, we present the guidelines on selecting stakeholders, and within the initial selection, engage a group of committed users. As shown in Fig. 1, the guidelines adopt and adapt the principles from participatory scientists, which include (based on Bell and Reed 2021) valuing, equality, authenticity, transparency, agency, representation, and deliberation, to which we add interdisciplinarity and inclusivity (Glavovic et al. 2022; Cologna and Oreskes 2022).
Stakeholder and user analysis for climate services coproduction processes.
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 2; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0112.1
3. Results: The guidelines
This section presents the guidelines for the user-oriented analysis, summarized in Fig. 1.
a. Step 1: Why—high-level goal conceptualization
The literature recommends as the first step to focus on the conceptualization of the high-level goal or problem, rather than on the specific climate service or indicator to be developed, which will be done later with users (Beier et al. 2017; Norström et al. 2020; Prell et al. 2009). High-level goals can imply a wider range of aspects as, for instance, noted in Norström et al. (2020):
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achieving changes in policies and practices,
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achieving changes in attitudes and perceptions,
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creating new relationships and networks of collaboration, and
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increasing the agency of previously marginalized actors, or even impacts,
or also, more concrete for climate services:
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supporting midterm decision-making processes linked to policy and
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improving the sectoral applications of predictions and projections.
In practical terms, project discussions usually start among, ideally, an interdisciplinary team of social and physical climate scientists, as well as service designers.
This will allow the project team to continue with the follow-up steps, but we should return to these steps once the stakeholders are engaged (step 6.1), to specify the objectives, confirm the shared understandings, and ensure alignment to the user needs as the second component of goal definition. Issue or action definition should be conceived as a flexible and iterative process, moreover, because the pool of stakeholders might change across the life cycle of a project and ensuring shared understanding among the project network is key for reaching milestones (Norström et al. 2020). For example, a project has the original high-level goal to improve the sectoral application of decadal predictions in agriculture. Upon discussion with the engaged users (step 6.1), information at a decadal time scale can prove less relevant for the service, as the amount of yield is determined by the climate in the months before the harvest. Hence, seasonal predictions are identified by stakeholders as the most appropriate in this case and thus the high-level goal needs to be adjusted. This is also related to step 2.
b. Step 2: Where—defining the case
Climate services depart from applied climate science and are generally related to a specific context including a climate-sensitive sector, scale, and governance system. Relevant to the sector of agriculture, energy, and forest is that climate science generally encompasses boundary-spanning issues that should be viewed in relation to complex, interconnected systems (Cash et al. 2003). The scale and the governance system imply a recognition of the multiple spatial, temporal, jurisdictional, and institutional levels that intervene in human–environment systems (Cash et al. 2006). The recognition of this complexity is the departure point to determine where the users are located. Again, this is an interactive step that will have to be repeated with stakeholders once identified and engaged (step 6.2, below, and in terms of scale, see step 6.3). In this iteration, the case can be further defined; for instance, stakeholders and users can help identify an event that can become the subject of a climate service coproduction process (Terrado et al. 2023).
The European Commission–funded climate science and climate services projects, such as Fully Optimized User Centric Climate Services Value Chain for Southern Africa (FOCUS-Africa), Process-Based Climate Simulation: Advances in High-Resolution Modelling and European Climate Risk Assessments (PRIMAVERA), the European Climate Prediction system (EUCP), and the Mediterranean Grape, Olive and Durum wheat food systems (MED-GOLD) or the prototypes evaluated in the European Provision of Regional Impacts Assessment on Seasonal and Decadal Timescales (EUPORIAS), add a range of case studies to apply developments in science to specific contexts, from the local to the supranational. This practice is recommended because of the very need of applied climate science or climate services to support a decision or action that is likely to be context bounded, independent of the context being as broad as, for instance, the European level [see, e.g., Athanasiou et al. (2020) for an EUCP example]. An alternative is for climate services that are of technical readiness and that have already been developed with a use-case in mind, such as wine producers in the MED-GOLD project.
Gerring (2016), in his seminal book on case study research, discusses several techniques and criteria for choosing a place-based case, depending on the high-level goal (step 1) of the scientific project, which we have adapted for developing climate services (Table 1).
Criteria for place-based case selection for climate service coproduction and examples.
Stakeholder and network studies have shown that errors at the stage of defining case boundaries can incur in validity issues but equally impact the feasibility of the chosen approach to step 3: stakeholder identification [for more guidance, see Borgatti et al. (2018), chapter 3]. This step, as furthered in the discussion, is crucial if one considers aspects of scalability or replication of the climate service.
c. Step 3: Whom to include—stakeholder and user identification
The vision of the user is of relevance, and initial preconceptions about them should be openly discussed by the group involved in a climate service project. Generally, the literature describes the effect of the “mini me” by which scientists misinterpret the profile of the user, who they see as someone with similar perceptions, background, and decision-making rationales as themselves despite being rarely the case (Porter and Dessai 2017). Participatory methodologies are generally added to scientific processes to address initial (mis)perceptions, challenge assumptions, and facilitate mutual learning between participants, which implies that users have as much to learn from scientists as scientists have to learn from users. As a sign of recognition, some projects differently label the users more intensively engaged in coproduction [see a review on the different notions of coproduction in Bremer and Meisch (2017)]. For instance, there are labels such as superusers [Adaptation-Oriented Seamless Predictions of European Climate (ASPECT)], companion-partner users (EUCP), fellow users (FOCUS-Africa), champion users (PRIMAVERA), or next users (Otto et al. 2016).
Whom to include relies again on the previous steps and can imply only a small handful of stakeholders identified as potential users or a broad circle of over 100 stakeholders, as it depends on the high-level goal and case(s) (see, e.g., Zingraff-Hamed et al. 2020). In the table below, we show the range of possible categories from which the pool of stakeholders/users can be identified. This step again brings considerations about the sector and scale, which partially depend on the decisions taken in the previous steps. Many of these stakeholder categories have a presence at several scales (e.g., an NGO can have headquarters at the European Union level and have local offices), and the scale should meet the scope of influence of the “decision or action” that the climate service is supporting, whether this is at the local, subnational, national, or supranational level (Table 2).
Proposition of user categories with typologies to guide user identification. Sources: Raaphorst et al. (2020); Roux et al. (2017); Street et al. (2015); our own.
There is no requisite that these categories should all be represented, but they can help in brainstorming because, depending on the high-level goals and selected case(s) (step 1 and 2), the potential pool of stakeholders and users will vary. Here, being mindful of the distinction between levels of aggregation is relevant, that is, treating individuals as such or individuals as representatives of organizations.
There are several methods to identify the first pool of stakeholders, ranging from basic desk research activities to more sophisticated content analysis of policy documents to detect stakeholders or stakeholder networks surrounding a given topic (see, e.g., Kalafatis et al. 2015). After a very initial identification of some stakeholders, among more resource-intensive methods there are focus groups and helicopter interviews, approaching actors with different perspectives on the state of the art (Hajer and Versteeg 2005), with or without integrating the practice of snowball sampling by which the initial contacts nominate other potential stakeholders (Reed et al. 2009). This stage of user identification requires technical skills and demands from scientists to couple them with a capacity for social analysis (Reed et al. 2009; Walker et al. 2008). Finally, project network personal contacts can be included, but it is important that they are subjected to step 4, to be aware of possible conflict of interests or power positions.
d. Step 4: Which attributes—from stakeholders to users
The identified actors will not all need to be involved with the same degree of engagement intensity; hence, this step asks, “Why would we like to count this stakeholder or potential user in the coproduction process?” In terms of attributes, Mitchell et al. (1997) propose to characterize stakeholders based on influence, power, and legitimacy (Jepsen and Eskerod 2009, p. 336) [see Reed et al. (2009, p. 1938) for alternatives]. Adapting this approach to climate services, users can be fit into profiles based on the users’ power and influence to determine the type and characteristics of climate service(s) that will be developed; the urgency with which the climate service is needed; the legitimacy of supporting the decision-making process related to the climate service; the multiplicity of interests and perceptions; and, related, knowledge types (Table 3).
Definition of attributes for stakeholder selection and assessment questions.
After this step, one can proceed to establish a desired level of involvement.
e. Step 5: With which intensity—defining engagement intensity
Once the reasons why a stakeholder is desirable to be included are checked, the next step is to propose an involvement degree for the coproduction process. The attributes of step 4 can be assessed together in a multiattribute exercise to link them to elements of a coproduction process that range from passive to more active engagement forms.
The multiattribute exercise can be done qualitatively or by adding a quantitative approach [e.g., Likert scales, see for instance Bourne and Walker (2005)]. The criteria can have different weights as illustrated by the following example for the criterion of “knowledge”: depending on the high-level goal and/or the timeline of the project, familiarity with the topic (climate information, climate change, climate services) is considered relevant. Thus, not all types of knowledge may be required for the coproduction process. Moreover, “new” users not familiarized with climate information may need capacity building, which might not be possible in the case of short projects with less time for engagement.
We envisage three degrees of engagement based on the framework for climate services presented in Bojovic et al. (2021): awareness raising (for all stakeholders), involvement (for those stakeholders who have characteristics of potential users), and empowerment (for those stakeholders who may be final users). The framework proposes different methods by engagement degree (Table 4).
Example of a multiattribute exercise to determine engagement degree. The ellipses (. . .) in column 5 indicate that it is left to the discretion of the analysts to select which attribute elements from Table 3 they deem relevant for the study.
Step 5 includes asking the identified stakeholders about their willingness to engage in the project to the desired degree. This is challenging due to the observed reality of stakeholder burnout (Delzeit et al. 2021).
To be successful on engaging stakeholders, scholars have identified several techniques:
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Carefully designed and tailored communication strategies are key to engage the user in a way that matters for them, and these can differ depending on the stakeholder/user needs (Bojovic et al. 2021; Christel et al. 2018, p. 201).
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Targeted email communication including, for instance, using the contact name details (if available); attaching an official letter from, e.g., the funding body project office; and proposing a date for a call for discussing further details can serve as a safe space to define the stakes of climate service from the stakeholder perspective. Effective but more invasive techniques are follow-up calls in the case of receiving a nonresponse to the email.
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After the stakeholder has agreed to participate, it is important also to confirm the needed degree of confidentiality that the user will require.
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Identifying influential stakeholders who can become sponsors of the project or climate service, such as, for example, scientists with a high reputation or policy brokers, can be beneficial. These are committed individuals or groups who may act as links between social groups and motivate others to participate (Armitage et al. 2009; Reinecke 2015; Baulenas et al. 2021). Additionally, identifying intermediary agents such as community-based organizations to monitor and ensure a power-balanced and transparent process can be important to avoid marginalization of certain groups (Thinyane et al. 2018).
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Some scholars propose monetary compensation (Klenk et al. 2015) in acknowledgment that the scientists and service developers are being paid to attend stakeholder-engaged meetings, while stakeholders may be taking time away from their actual jobs or other sources of income.
The benefit of conducting an exhaustive user identification and mapping (step 3) is that, per each profile considered relevant to participate in the process, there can be “backup” stakeholders in case of unwillingness to participate, discontinuing participation in the middle of the project (attrition), or intermittent availability during the process.
f. Step 6: How—iteration: adding the co-component to each step
The final step is the most important and starts once the stakeholders and users have been engaged in the process. This step returns back to steps 1 to 5 and revises them, adding the coproduction component to counter the top-down approach that has guided the previous steps.
Substep 6.1 consists of cospecifying the goals and decision-making process. The high-level goal (step 1) needs to be agreed upon and further elaborated on and specified between scientists and stakeholders. Studies on participative approaches have shown that joint goal definition can impact the success of the project (Reed et al. 2018, section 9). This step also generates problem ownership, which is important to maintain interest of stakeholders during the project (see, e.g., Delzeit et al. 2021). As the climate service definition also implies a decision-making context, at this step it can be codecided which decision can be supported by the climate service and which types of capacity-building processes this might require.
Substep 6.2 consists of codefining the case study, which implies decisions on the specificities of the case study: specific events or locations. For instance, step 2 selected “Barcelona,” substep 6.2 with stakeholders selects “the 2007/08 severe drought in Barcelona” (Martin-Ortega et al. 2011; March et al. 2013). To support this step with a coproduction approach, Terrado et al. (2023) proposed eight best practices for the selection of events with stakeholders in climate services.
The other substeps (6.3, 6.4, and 6.5) consist of covalidating the results of the exercises that the project team have conducted in steps 3, 4, and 5, respectively. For instance, step 3 identified the initial list of stakeholders; the currently engaged stakeholders can help identify other stakeholders that were not originally identified using snowball sampling. Step 4 established attributes for each participant. To some extent, the general attributes of the current network of engaged stakeholders can be shared. This can help raise awareness of the values that have been considered when including several profiles and the rationale behind themselves (the stakeholders) being present in the project, which can also positively contribute to project ownership. Substep 6.5 can validate if the communication strategy is suitable to the stakeholder realities.
The methods proposed under knowledge exchange (user forums, surveys, workshops, learning laboratories, interviews) are a good choice to conduct step 6 and its substeps, which can be done in the same get-together event [for more detail, see Bojovic et al. (2021)].
Last, to consolidate joint decisions and formalize the type of coproduction process that will be conducted with the stakeholders/users to develop the climate service, as well as to ensure intersubjectivity, there are several possible actions. Klenk et al. (2015, p. 744) proposed a memorandum of understanding “outlining goals, principles, and intellectual property rights of partnerships with non-academic stakeholders; clear roles and responsibilities of knowledge co-producers and guidelines for how partnerships will accumulate, store, and mobilize data.” This memorandum can be a living document accessible to all engaged stakeholders. Accessibility here may involve devising versions of this document also as a noncomputerized document available on community notice boards. The necessity for this will need to be assessed on an ad hoc basis.
Step 6 is also challenging because users might bring in different and sometimes irreconcilable needs that cannot feasibly be addressed with the future climate service, in what is recognized as the multiplicity of stakeholder interests (de Bakker and den Hond 2008). In the discussion, we provide some trouble-shooting techniques for these cases.
Figure 2 provides a visual picture of what the level of participation would look like for the various stakeholders in an ideal implementation of the six steps of these guidelines.
Idealized outcome of implementing the guidelines.
Citation: Weather, Climate, and Society 15, 2; 10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0112.1
4. Discussion
Climate information and services are linked to climate science, and as Owen et al. (2019, p. 152) suggest, “value-laden problems like climate change call out the need for socially engaged research processes to generate . . . knowledge that is useful-for and usable-by society to confront these so-called wicked problems.” We firmly believe that a consistent user-selection and engagement practice can ensure climate services meet these two success criteria: useful for and usable by society and societal representatives, from policymakers to local communities. Such wicked problems are multidimensional, and this multidimensionality makes clear the reasons behind collaborative, adaptable, and solution-centered approaches to science in which the complexities of human behavior are taken into account (Bednarek et al. 2018). There cannot be innovative solutions without the participation of stakeholders and users, beginning with the conceptualization of the climate service itself.
To achieve these standards, user selection and engagement in coproduction processes are tasks that should not be conducted ad hoc. The stakes that come with this process include legitimacy concerns, the possibility to empower previously marginalized but vulnerable groups, and enabling long-term uptake of climate services to strengthen adaptation and mitigation actions to combat our changing climate. At worst, ignoring the different types of knowledge found in climate-sensitive contexts can exacerbate the sidelining of the groups most impacted by the climate crisis, produce biased results, and be an obstacle for building the necessary trust in scientific activity required for acted-upon and evidence-based policymaking. As scholars point out, “A lack of process for identifying and involving stakeholders often leads to a very long initiating process and significant delays in implementation” (Zingraff-Hamed et al. 2020, p. 3). At the same time, we recognize that user selection and engagement are very demanding processes on which there has been insufficient emphasis in the field of climate services (Vaughan et al. 2018). In this paper, we have aimed to address this gap, and in this section, we share some trouble-shooting techniques to overcome some of the challenges that might arise during its implementation.
a. Multiplicity: Dealing with multiple demands, interests, and perceptions
Conflict and conflicting views are regarded in network studies as something functional that can lead to innovation, to the point that certain network management techniques are deliberately targeting different profiles (Provan and Kenis 2007). The presence of different perceptions, views, and interests is inherent to knowledge coproduction processes in climate services and service design (Porter and Dessai 2017). The interests can be partially derived from the position of the individual, moreover, if the individual acts at the mezzo level and is thus representative of an organization, and these can be identified in the initial stages of the user mapping and identification. However, these different expectations from the climate service need to be carefully managed through targeted methods such as focus groups, interviews, or workshops. Trained social scientists are here essential members of the team applying these methods.
b. Lacking a theme, a team
The proposal stage of research projects is key for planting the seeds of successful coproduction processes and of user selection and engagement. At the proposal stage, not only are objectives and tasks defined, but also the very practical aspects such as the budget distribution among project partners. Lessons learned from climate services projects suggest that it is important to factor in this aspect (see, e.g., Buontempo et al. 2018; Klenk et al. 2015). Proposals may incorporate a theme on the knowledge coproduction process (a dedicated work package), or alternatively encourage the incorporation of experts across several teams. Given the importance of design for obtaining successful outcomes in engagement processes, engaging in-house or external experts is always recommended.
c. Mutual, negative, and unlearning
While learning is often thought of as always beneficial per se, the literature on policy learning in climate policymaking shows that some processes can also move toward undesired pathways (Biesbroek and Candel 2020). Additionally, some learning processes require “unlearning.” As Neij and Heiskanen (2021, p. 12) report, “Importantly, deep-seated changes are also suggested to require the need for unlearning of existing practices.” For instance, a forest owner who has never used climate services to base her decision-making processes on (e.g., type of management) might be reluctant to change practices that might be influenced by long-standing family traditions and the practices of other community members such as local leaders (Oliva et al. 2016). Using coproduction methods and having different disciplines in the scientist team can help create a climate of trust among the project scientists and stakeholders and convert the project into a platform of exchange and learning. In this platform of exchange, reciprocity, all parts gaining from participating in the process, can be more easily ensured.
d. Visualizing power
Norström et al. (2020, p. 5) observed that, “Asymmetrical power relations can prevent some actors from engaging in knowledge co-production and will reproduce knowledge hierarchies, in which certain knowledge and expertise are seen as being more legitimate than others.” This will impact the quality of the engagement process and bias results. In fact, the very implementation of participatory processes is a response to the willingness to balance power not only among societal groups, but also between researchers and users. Collaboration and deliberative processes within can help create more equalized dynamics (Mosley 2013, p. 70). There are several tools in place to identify power relations in projects (see, e.g., Reed et al. 2009; Schiffer 2007). Depending on the type of context in which the project is developed, stakeholders might know each other, and here, social network analysis can help in understanding the linkages between stakeholders as well as the inherent power dynamics.
e. Scale and scalability
These guidelines may be applied to any scale of decision-making, from local, to regional, to supranational, targeting stakeholders concerned with problems that pertain to each of these scales. The framework can, in addition, support scalability and replicability of case studies, especially when thoroughly conducting step 3 for case selection. For scaling up activities, the stakeholder mapping needs to be adjusted to the institutional and sociopolitical frameworks existing at different decision-making scales. However, similar or the same figures can recur in different scales as well as stakeholder categories. For example, civil protection may be an independent agency in one country, but it can also be situated in a department in the ministry or be distributed as a network pertaining to several sectors.
Overall, these trouble-shooting techniques may provide support in creating usable and legitimate science that contributes to the decision-making processes for a wide range of societal actors, strengthening adaptation and mitigation actions to combat climate change. Last, although the proposed steps for user selection and engagement may provide a robust approach, they also have some limitations. For instance, we have addressed several important topics such as power, scale, and principles in research, but only briefly. Thus, these guidelines may need to be supported with additional references, some of which we have already added when discussing these topics. Our assumption is nonetheless that these guidelines may be used by a team with expertise that can understand the repercussions of these key aspects in the selection and engagement of stakeholders in climate services coproduction processes.
5. Conclusions
In this article, we adapted stakeholder analysis methodologies to offer a hands-on road map for user selection and engagement in climate services. The six steps consist of 1) why: the definition of the high-level goal(s); 2) where: delineation of the case; 3) who: user mapping and identification; 4) which attributes: multiattribute analysis for selection criteria; 5) with which intensity: deciding on the engagement intensity; and last 6) introducing coproduction to each step. As an outcome, the proposed steps introduce context (step 2), scalar fit (step 3), power (step 4), and design (step 5) considerations, which in Reed et al. (2018) are shown not only to determine the success of different types of engagement, but also to counteract the normativity of infusing projects with principles. We advocate for an iterative collaborative process that engages in a dialogue among different types of expertise to consistently incorporate climate services into decision-making for a climate-resilient society, viewing users as experts of their own knowledge domain.
Acknowledgments.
We acknowledge that the work presented in this paper is based on knowledge and experience that the authors gained from working on various projects, including the European Union–funded projects PRIMAVERA (641727), Advanced Prediction in Polar Regions and Beyond: Modelling, Observing System Design and Linkages Associated with a Changing Arctic Climate (APPLICATE) (727862), MED-GOLD (776467), EUCP (776613), the Next Generation Earth System Models (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101003470) (NextGEMS) (101003470), Impetus4Change (101081555), FOCUS-Africa (869575), and EUPORIAS (308291). The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. We thank the reviewers for allowing the paper to better reflect, curate, and frame our ideas. This work has been funded under the projects NextGEMS (101003470) and FOCUS-Africa (GA869575).
Data availability statement.
No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
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