Group discussions on how to implement a participatory process in climate adaptation planning: a case study in Malaysia

Abstract

The frequency and intensity of extreme climate events are increasing all around the world, due to climate change. Climate adaptation strategies are therefore needed, since mitigation strategies alone are not sufficient to avoid serious impacts of climate change. However, adaptation to climate change is not straightforward, as it is highly influenced by diverse and conflicting interests as well as epistemological (or scientific) uncertainties. Therefore, a minimum requirement for its success is the active participation of stakeholders and citizens in the adaptation policy cycle. This paper presents a case study on a participatory process involving civil servants from different municipalities in Malaysia, in Southeast Asia, with a view to considering the optimal level of engagement that is required for climate adaptation planning. The exercise consisted of a Focus Group session, where participants were asked to discuss the level of stakeholder and citizen participation that should be adopted within the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy initiative. Contrary to authors' expectations, the participants tended to suggest medium to high levels of participation in the planning process. During the dialogues, a walking activity through the city, aimed at identifying hotspots of climate risks and defined as “safety walks”, was one of the ideas proposed as a high-potential participatory method, spreading in the adaptation framework. Safety walks could complement climate modelling and enhance the robustness of climate risk assessments.

Integrating Behavioral Theories in Agent-Based Models for Agricultural Drought Risk Assessments

“…The initial model setup is often based on a combination of theory and qualitative information on the local context of the case study region. Suitable qualitative empirical information in this stage can come from key informant interviews and expert knowledge, other suitable technics that can be used to gather qualitative data are fuzzy cognitive mapping (e.g., Mehryar et al, 2019), focus group discussions (e.g., Nyumba et al, 2018;Palermo and Hernandez, 2020), participant observations (e.g., Yang and Gilbert, 2008) and participatory modeling (e.g., Belem et al, 2018). The initial model setup could be fully derived from such qualitative, empirical data, but we advise to build on an established behavioral theory.…”

Citizen Participation and Climate Change within an Urban Community Context: Insights for Policy Development for Bottom-Up Climate Action Engagement

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“…Most of our respondents indicated the need to be involved in the policy-making process, as a way of getting better knowledge and awareness of policies that are in place to help combat climate change. This could also help in preventing the formulation of redundant policies that do not yield results [49]. The designing of policy is crucial to the effect that it can cause the environmental protection programs to not reach their objectives if the public's environmental awareness is not taken into consideration.…”

An Assessment of Farmers’ Training Needs on Drought Management Strategies for Improved Crops and Livestock Production in Northern Nigeria

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