Climate information may be available but that does not necessarily mean it is reaching people in a form they can use or addressing the risks and decisions they face.
A new study in Nature, led by researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and co-authored by African partners, found a significant gap between the climate services people use for nature-based solutions and the services they say they need.
Sustainable climate services required active engagement with stakeholders and a deep understanding of their needs, the study said.
“Typically, producers of climate services only partially engage with the full breadth of user needs when developing and operationalising projections, forecasts and interfaces, resulting in climate services that are not usable or useful.
“In some cases, target users are not even informed once a climate service is developed and made available. This disconnect between climate service users and the climate services themselves is a major barrier to actualising the benefits of climate services.”
The study, based on interviews with 530 respondents across seven sites in South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar, found that 39% to 53% of respondents’ priorities for new climate services overlapped with the services they were using.
The researchers said that suggested many stated “new” needs might point to weaknesses in services that needed to be strengthened. But the gaps between services and desired needs also revealed areas where genuinely new climate services were required.
Among those were integrated climate-risk information that combined weather and climate data with biophysical, social, health and economic information; information tailored to community, municipal and ward-level decision-making; and greater use of community radio, mobile technology, social media, instant messaging and apps to distribute warnings and advisories.
Respondents also identified a need for illustrations, animations and videos alongside more traditional climate information formats.
The research found a particularly strong demand for climate services that combined different knowledge systems. Between 81% and 91% of respondents indicated that any new climate service should integrate indigenous and/or local knowledge with science-based knowledge for it to be usable and useful.
The researchers said that developing climate services should therefore go beyond consulting communities about expert-designed products.
“Co-production is not achieved simply by informing stakeholders about available science or consulting them on predefined products,” the study said, warning that shallow, extractive or one-way engagement could reduce opportunities for communities and other users to contribute their own knowledge and identify less familiar needs.
Dr Petra Holden, the study’s lead author from UCT’s African Climate & Development Initiative, said the research highlighted the danger of treating climate-service development as primarily a technical exercise.
“This research highlights the risk of shallow engagement and externally led co-production processes. Developing climate services is not simply a technical exercise,” Holden said.
The study also found that the problem cut across different groups. Stakeholder types, whether respondents came from communities, government, NGOs, research institutions, private companies or other organisations, did not significantly predict the extent to which their climate-service use overlapped with their desired needs.
Geographical location, however, did. That suggests that climate-service needs were shaped by place and local context rather than simply by whether someone belonged to a particular stakeholder group.
The study found that 82% of climate-service users reported limitations in the services they used.
More than 60% also identified climate literacy as an area requiring strengthening, including understanding climate change and its impacts, knowing what climate services were available and having the skills to interpret forecasts and uncertainty and apply them to decisions.
The most commonly identified limitations were insufficient integration of Indigenous and/or local knowledge with scientific knowledge, poor accessibility and climate information not being received when it was needed.
Concerns about the credibility of climate services and inappropriate delivery channels were also among the leading limitations. The researchers found that users tended to prioritise information for immediate and shorter-term decisions, particularly daily, weekly and one-to-six-month timeframes.
Heat, floods, drought and severe winds were the key hazards where respondents identified limitations in services, followed by fire.
Dr Cherié Forbes, a research officer at UCT’s People in Nature and Climate Lab and a co-author of the study, said that recognising the different contexts was particularly important in Africa because climate-service needs were shaped by diverse local contexts and experiences.
“Understanding these contexts and recognising the value of indigenous and local knowledge alongside scientific knowledge is essential,” Forbes said.
The researchers said that strengthening climate services required two parallel approaches: improving services people used, while creating genuinely new services where there were clear gaps.
Both processes needed to give users and knowledge holders enough time and space to participate meaningfully. The researchers cautioned that simply asking users what climate services they needed might not be enough.
People’s responses were shaped by their previous exposure to climate information and the services available to them, meaning they might ask for improvements to familiar services without identifying needs that fell outside their experience.
The researchers recommended that future assessments distinguish between the existing, expressed needs and less familiar needs, while creating more iterative and participatory processes in which users and producers could reflect on what was being used, what was not working and what assumptions might be shaping their responses.
The ultimate goal, they said, should be climate information that was scientifically sound, accessible, timely, trusted and grounded in the realities and knowledge of the people expected to use it.