Abstract:
There is increasing recognition of the importance of co-producing climate services to bridge the current “usability” gap in climate information for decision-making – yet understanding precisely how this should take place
is less well elaborated. One key stage of the co-production process involves identifying specifically which climate
metrics can usefully inform decisions – but methods that can be drawn upon to construct this information are
often overlooked. We discuss how the choice and application of four existing social science methods (interviewinformed role play workshop, open-ended interviews, prioritised surveys and enhanced surveys) arose out of, and
was in turn embedded within, a different epistemological approach characteristic of co-production to identify
decision-relevant climate metrics for the water and agriculture sectors in Malawi and Tanzania. In so doing, we
reflect on the evolution of our understanding of co-production as our assumptions were challenged, from the
expectation that we would be able to “obtain” metrics from users, to a dynamic mutual definition based on better
understanding of the decision-making contexts. Such reflections inform emerging experiences of co-production of
climate services, as well as having implications for broader contexts beyond the climate change space in which
co-production is attempted to improve science-society interactions.
