ClEAR Talking Points

The following talking points were written by Tom Downing on January 23, 2007.

1. The longer term need for adapting to climate change begins with understanding current risks, managing information about those risks, and making decisions on adaptation. The value of information is in guiding adaptation, rather than risk assessment per se.

2. Climate change is a long term evolution of the climate system, and socio-economic vulnerability will evolve at the same time. That is, the baseline of climatic risks and stresses in the absence of adaptation actions will change, and possibly quite significantly. Having good information is essential to avoid unwarranted surprises.

3. Using good information is often the constraint. The AWhere/ClEAR strategy of a 'user community' easily sharing information, getting updated climate envelopes as they are available, and building into the sharing 'storylines' of graphics, maps and interpretations is instrumental.

4. The solutions are not necessarily technical, however. Understanding participatory methods, how to elicit and represent knowledge from different stakeholders, and to manage conflicting perspectives, values and resource allocation, are part of the design of the ClEAR platform.

5. ClEAR is one activity in a collaborative programme with UNEP, with a working title of Centres for Climate Adaptation. The aim is to have a strong network of centres of excellence that take forward climate risk management, working together on capacity building, linking to on-the-ground organisations and activities, representing adaptation issues at a wider scale.

6. The benefits of a systematic, collective approach is in establishing a user community. One that uses this information in ongoing planning (e.g. in disseminated seasonal climate forecasts, or calculating disaster insurance rates) that builds capacity to cope with risks as they unfold. This is the only platform that we have seen that has this capacity.

7. Our long term aim is to establish ClEAR, with AWhere modules (and possibly extensions such as WEAP), as an open source project. However, this will require the sort of seed funding to endow the consortium, translate the code to multiple platforms, and build the installed user base.