Shared learning: a vehicle for advancing integration
Processes that support learning across regions, disciplines, and scales
are essential for the evolution of integrated responses to climate
change. The impacts of climate change are increasingly clear; effective
avenues for sharing lessons and addressing them far less so.
As
the recent IPCC Working Group II
report highlights, climate change will have a fundamental impact on
everything from food systems to urbanisation in Asia. These impacts will
emerge as climate interacts with complex dynamic social, infrastructure,
and ecological systems. Management of these systems requires specialised
knowledge from many disciplines and areas of activity. It requires
integration.
Available projections of changes in climate are
generally insufficient to meet the information needs that people working
in different fields require. Most climate projections focus on averages
and do not communicate the nuances required by specialists in different
sectors. Climate scientists need to understand the types of information
required in different contexts in order to evaluate the results they
produce, extract, and interpret relevant data. Similarly, users need to
understand what climate science involves, the types of information it
can produce and the inherent uncertainties in order to apply it within
their own areas of activity.
Bridging the above gap between the
“users” of climate information the “producers” of such information
requires shared-learning. Because systems are complex, interdependent
and affected by interactions across boundaries, scales, and time,
understanding needs to be integrated among different groups of actors.
Furthermore, information alone rarely translates linearly into policy or
action. Instead, it flows into contexts where ideas, issues, and
approaches are contested and outcomes emerge as a consequence of power
relations and negotiation processes. As a result,
shared learning and integration must engage with different actors
and the social positions they take.
The discussion below explores
experiences from shared learning techniques by the
Asian Cities Climate
Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) to support the development of
climate resilience strategies for cities in Vietnam, India, Thailand,
and Indonesia. These experiences represent an initial attempt at
integration through share learning. More systematic processes within a
range of social contexts, including technical and scientific
disciplines, are needed.
Within the ACCCRN program, shared
learning approaches were adopted as a basic strategy to engage cities
and then support cities in developing a guiding climate resilience
strategy. While this philosophy was common across the program, the
actual process of shared learning played out somewhat differently in
each city. In Vietnam, the highly centralized nature of government
allowed the process to be rolled out in a fairly linear fashion through
meetings and research activities coordinated by municipal governments.
In India, local elections prevented government officials from attending
meetings and the process relied far more on one-to-one discussions
coupled and engagement with non-governmental organizations. Thailand
represented yet another situation where the role of municipal
governments is more tied to regional and national political structures.
Despite differences in the actual process of shared learning, in all
cases it resulted in the emergence of a small set of well-informed and
active individuals who, through a process of sharing, contestation and
debate, translated the elements most relevant to the city into locally
tailored strategic documents and courses of action. The processes were,
of course, imperfect. This said, the strategic approaches enabled
initiation of a wide range of activities to build resilience. They also
created a “ripple” of knowledge and understanding through the cities and
the set of partners involved in the program. This growing body of
understanding has elements that are shared but is also differentiated
according to roles, interests, and perspectives of the groups involved.
While the shared learning process has similarities to action
research and participatory planning – similar to the change processes
carried out in
Advancing Integration - the potential role of shared-learning
approaches is not limited to development contexts.
Shared forms
of learning are also essential for communication between experts in
technical fields. In, for example,
Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET)’s research
in Pakistan on the impacts of temperature, medical professionals
indicated that the heat index (a measure that combines temperature and
humidity) is the best predictor for heat stress hospitalisation.
Understanding this was essential for scientists working at
the US National Centre for Atmospheric
Centre to extract relevant information from ensemble simulation
runs. Shared learning between professional groups resulted in clear
identification of the severe impact temperature change will have on
health in cities across South Asia. This critical new knowledge could
not have been identified without shared-learning.
Overall, shared
learning processes are central to integrating the complex impacts
climate change is having on ecosystems, infrastructure, and the social
fabric of society. Existing experience relates primarily to the use of
shared learning processes for integration of action research and
planning. Such processes could, however, be refined and targeted to
bridge professional and scientific divides as well. Progress of this
type is essential if societies across the globe are to integrate
knowledge, build resilience, and adapt to the impacts of climate change.