Challenges for Scientists and Policy-Makers

Mitigation of climate change has been a priority in international negotiations for the past few years, with major States actively engaging in the fight against global warming. As the risks and impacts of climate change become more concrete, international negotiations have now turned to adaptation schemes. To answer growing societal needs (physical as well as socio-economic), policy-makers recognize that they must work more closely with the scientific community and other stakeholders, including the private sector and civil society organisations.

It is in this context that the Centre for International Governance of the Graduate Institute is conducting a one-year project focusing on ways to improve communication between scientists and policy-makers. Sponsored by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, this project aims at identifying means and processes to make scientific data and models (climate research products) accessible to a wider public of decision-makers.

The project’s objectives are to review the needs for climate research products, as well as obstacles to access and use them. Lessons learned will feed into the negotiations at the international level and more specifically during the World Climate Conference 3 (WCC-3) that will be hosted by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva at the end of August this year. *

A public conference held at the Graduate Institute on 23 February 2009 presented the project and discussed issues of climate change adaptation in current international negotiations. Three workshops will take place during the spring of 2009 to facilitate dialogue between scientists, policy-makers, users and other stakeholders. Issues such as water management, food security, health or natural disasters in developing and developed countries will be addressed during those workshops.

The preliminary results of the project will be presented during a side-event at the WCC-3 on «Climate Change and Governance: Ways To Identify Users’ Needs and Facilitate the Use of Climate Research Products». A final report will be published after the WCC-3.

* WCC-3 will address challenges to respond to the recognised needs for the use of climate research products to address climate change, in particular by developing means to help vulnerable regions of the world. http://www.wmo.int/wcc3/