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Stepping-Up Knowledge Exchange between Climate Adaptation Knowledge Platforms (KE4CAP)

ke4cap logo
An overview of the KE4CAP project. Video by Ramses Madina, sonomamedialab.com.

Summary

Climate adaptation gains in importance, and the Paris Agreement 2015 calls on Parties to strengthen cooperation on enhancing action on adaptation. This, along with recognition that policymakers require high-quality and relevant information to support decision-making, has led many countries to establish web-based climate adaptation platforms whilst other countries are now actively planning such platforms. These platforms provide access to information, evidence and guidance intended to inform the development of adaptation strategies and plans at the local, national, and transnational scales. However, they are all at different stages of development and capabilities, and all face challenges that, potentially, limit their effectiveness in supporting the required climate action.

The KE4CAP project provides a forum for developers and operators of all platforms (from those at the early planning stage through to well-established platforms) to come together to compare and learn from their individual approaches, to share knowledge and best practices, and to work together to address common and emerging challenges. The overall aims are to stimulate knowledge exchange to advance cooperation and learning, and to inspire the evolution of national and regional adaptation platforms in terms of scope, governance, content coverage, functionality and management.

The KE4CAP project is now complete. The final KE4CAP Synthesis Report summarising discussions and input from across all project activities is available here.

For those interested in understanding the impacts of project, the KE4CAP Impacts, learning and Ways Forward report assesses what the project achieved and the ingredients of success. It also offers ideas for ways forward to foster continued knowledge exchange across the community.

Developers and operators of climate adaptation knowledge platforms are invited to use the KE4CAP resources which can be accessed from the links in the Work Programme below. A list of platforms we have been working with is here.

Outcomes and impacts

Benefits are anticipated in the following areas:

  • Developing content as adaptation policies and actions evolve, including how platforms retain their policy relevance.
  • Linking climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction;
  • Linking climate change adaptation with the sustainable development goals;
  • Embedding technological innovations to increase functionality and user-friendliness;
  • Providing examples of good practices related to supporting evolving users’ requirements;
  • Supporting a wide range of users with different capacities and decision-making cultures;
  • Evaluation, quality assurance and quality control to support the updating of platforms;
  • Demonstrating the value of web-based adaptation platforms, including in terms of contributing to monitoring, evaluation and reporting on adaptation at national and international levels;
  • Enhancing collaboration and harmonisation of platforms to promote quality and utility from the perspective of users.

Project consortium

Funded by the European Commission through the SPIPA programme, KE4CAP will focus on promoting cooperation between EU countries and non-European major economies; challenge-focused bi-laterals will be held between the EU and Canada, Japan and Australia, and global reach will be extended further through targeted collaborations with Europe, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina and India. European experts will be involved at all stages, and the challenges and lessons learnt will be documented and shared widely to help engage across SPIPA-targeted countries and Europe.

Project team:

  • Roger Street, University of Oxford, UK (lead).
  • Julia Barrott, weADAPT Knowledge Manager, Stockholm Environment Institute, UK.
  • Jeremy Gault, Thematic Lead for Coastal and Marine Systems at MaREI, UCC.
  • Barry O’Dwyer, Lead Research Scientist, Impacts and Adaptation at MaREI, UCC
  • Kim van Nieuwaal, Strategic advisor Climate Adaptation Services and Director of Delta Alliance International, Netherlands
  • Vicky Hayman, University of Oxford, UK (project coordinator)

Project Partners:

  • Australia: Geoff Gooley (CSIRO) is Program Manager for the NESP ESCC Hub which is a national climate change science and services partnership between CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and five universities (UTas, ANU, Monash, Univ Melbourne and UNSW).

  • Canada: Lo Cheng (Environment and Climate Change Canada) is the responsible manager for the Canadian Centre for Climate Services (CCCS) portal helping Canadians understand, and become more resilient to climate change. b

  • Japan: Yasuaki Hijioka (National Institute for Environmental Studies) is the responsible manager for Japan’s National Adaptation Platform (A-PLAT) designed to disseminate and support Japan’s National Adaptation Plan; and for the Asia-Pacific Adaptation Platform (AP-PLAT)designed to facilitate partnership and collaboration on climate-resilient and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region.

  • Argentina, India, Mexico and South Africa. The global reach of the project will be extended by working with representatives from these countries who are operating, developing, or currently considering developing, adaptation platforms. More information on progress in these countries and the challenges they are interested in addressing can be found here

Funding

This work is being funded by the European Commission as part of the Strategic Partnerships for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement (SPIPA). It builds on and complements existing European climate policy dialogues and cooperation with Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and the USA.

Work Programme

The KE4CAP project is now complete. A final KE4CAP Synthesis Report summarising all the discussion and input from all the knowledge exchange events and activities listed below is available to download to the right.

COP26:Development and utilization of information platform towards climate resilient societies in Asia-Pacific Region, 2 November 2021

KE4CAP accepted an invitation to speak at this COP26 Japan Pavilion session which was hosted by the Ministry of Environment, Japan. The session explored the potential of international climate adaptation platforms to accelerate adaptation across countries and focussed on sharing good practices on how science can be used to inform evidence-based strategic planning and implementation of adaptation actions at the regional level.

More information and a report from the event is available here.

Synthesis Workshop:Climate Adaptation Platforms –RealizingtheValueof Shared Learning, 8-9 September 2021.

This is the final workshop from the KE4CAP project and will be co-hosted with Climate-ADAPT. We welcome all CAP operators, developers and users to hear about progress being made, to consider how CAPs can continue to support evolving policy and practice, and to discuss opportunities for future joint activities..

More information available here.

BKE EU-Japan,Enhancing Connections Across International, National and Local Adaptation Actions, 29 & 30 June, 2021

These two events will be hosted by the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) in Japan. They will provide an opportunity to continue discussions in two key areas: (i) linking local and national platforms to promote action, and (ii) enhancing the role and value of CAPs in supporting transnational action, with an emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region.

  • More information here.

European Climate Change Adaptation (ECCA) conference,8June 2021

KE4CAP will be contributing to the ECCA 2021 webinar “At your service: climate knowledge & information as enablers of climate action”. This webinar will explore and consider means of enhancing the use and development of climate services and climate adaptation (knowledge) platforms as enablers of climate action. More information here.

BKE EU-Canada,Enhancing Connections across Platforms,11-20May 2021

Working with KE4CAP, the Government of Canada is hosting four linked workshops to bring together international experts to better understand the Canadian and other platform landscapes, explore opportunities to connect and expand their ‘network of networks’, and develop better services to meet their platform users. ​

  • A full report of the events can be found here.

Adaptation Futures 2020 pre-conference webinar, Adaptation decision-support tools and platforms, 28 April 2021

The KE4CAP community contributed to this event. Hosted by Roger Street and Jean Palutikof, the webinar (recording here) included presentations from: Australia (Knowledge provision for adaptation – matching delivery to need: some examples from Australia); the Philippines (eCCET Helper: Bridging the gap between knowledge production and use); and India (Building bridges for knowledge and action on climate change adaptation in India: Insights from national & sub-national levels). More information at: http://adaptationfutures2020.in/

Virtual KE activity (VKE5),The role of CAPs in supporting monitoring, reporting, and evaluation (MRE) of progress in adaptation, 23 March 2021

This event will focus on the role of platforms in contributing to national and international MRE of adaptation actions. It includes the perceive legitimacy of such a role for platforms, whether it is a role that has been anticipated, and the ways in which CAPs are able to contribute.

  • More information here.

Virtual KE activity (VKE4),Communications, knowledge brokering and stewardship to stimulate and enable action, 14 January 2021

What do we need to understand about user needs to communicate and broker knowledge effectively and how can these different aspects inform how we go improving communications and knowledge brokering.

  • More information here.

Virtual KE activity (VKE3),Ensuring Platforms’ Agility in order to Meet Evolving User Needs, 11 November 2020

What are the best approaches to ensure that climate adaptation platforms remain relevant in terms of evolving user needs and an ever-changing world in terms of technology, data collation interpretation and provision?

  • More information here.

Virtual KE activity (VKE2),Supporting and Working with Local Actors, 23 September 2020

This second virtual KE event will focus on ‘How can action by local actors be encouraged and supported using climate adaptation platforms?‘ This includes how we connect and engage with local actors, in particularly local authorities, both online and face-to-face (and how we link these two approaches), how we encourage and support these users, including how we demonstrate the benefits ofacting on climate change, and how we help build their capacity to undertake adaptation assessments and implement interventions.

  • More information here.

Input to the EU Adaptation Strategy,August 2020

In May 2020, the European Commission launched a consultation on the new EU strategy on adaptation to climate change. Contributions were invited from stakeholders and citizens to inform the design of the new strategy; a blueprint for the strategy accompanied the consultation to provide context, indicate possible directions of development and stimulate the debate.

Based on expertise within the KE4CAP project team, and drawing on discussions during the broader project activities, a KE4CAP position paper was submitted here.

KE4CAP Survey, initiated July 2020

The aim of the survey is to better to understand and help share what is working well for CAPs on various topics including governance, content coverage, management, functionality, maintaining relevance, etc., and what is working less well and why. By sharing this information, we hope to help inform future platform improvements, point to potential collaborative efforts, and gain and communicate a better understanding of the value added by web-based platforms.

The Survey Synthesis Report is available here.

Virtual KE activity (VKE1),KE4CAP: Introduction, Engagement and Next Steps, 30 June 2020

The will be the first in a series of virtual KE events aimed at engaging more closely with web-based climate adaptation platform developers and operators. The webinar will introduce the EU-funded ‘Stepping Up Knowledge Exchange between Climate Adaptation Platforms’ project and explore areas for potential future knowledge sharing activities to address common and emerging challenges.

BKE EU-Australia, Services and Science Supporting Climate Action, 3-5 March 2020, Melbourne.

The March 2020 EU-Australia bi-lateral on developing and using web-based resources to enhance climate intelligence and support climate action yielded rich insights on developing a value proposition, building business models, governance for climate adaptation platforms and engaging users.

  • A full report from the event can be found here.
  • Details of the event itself can be found here.
  • More information on the Australian national platform and some of the challenges they are interested in addressing can be found here.

Supported by:

This webpage was created and maintained with the financial support of the European Union’s Partnership Instrument and the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety (BMU) in the context of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The opinions expressed are the sole responsibility of the University of Oxford and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.