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Co-production is increasingly acknowledged as the preferred mode for producing climate services, especially in complex and information-limited decision contexts. This paper contributes knowledge on practices and processes that can enable effective climate services in such contexts, through sharing experiences from the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project.FRACTAL focused on informing actions to tackle climate-related issues in nine cities in six southern African countries over a six-year period and, in parallel, developing research findings and insights. Principles for effectively co-producing climate services were collaboratively identified by the project team, after which practical insights were detailed by analysing the body of evidence produced during FRACTAL using qualitative methods. This analysis helped to understand how principles were engendered, as well as associated challenges.While many principles identified resonate with the growing body of relevant knowledge, practical insights from this study contribute to understanding ‘how’ principles can be engendered. Experiences emphasise the importance of engaging participants’ emotions, avoiding centring on climate information, using a “third space” to facilitate equitable engagements, directing resources towards having fun and learning actively, process-driven iteration, focusing on contemporary issues with which stakeholders can connect, introducing a pathways framing, and embedding researchers in decision-making contexts. This constitutes a more comprehensive set of principles than was previously available in the literature. Application of these principles and the transdisciplinary framing, which was core to FRACTAL, supports a shift away from a focus on ‘products’ to knowledge co-production ‘processes’ where collaborative learning is the defining characteristic of climate services.

This paper seeks to reconceptualize climate services in light of the prevailing inability of existing climate information to spur needed policy and action. We propose refocusing the climate services lens by moving away from a narrow, supply-driven emphasis on products. Instead, we advocate moving towards a process-centric approach defined by transdisciplinary collaboration that purposefully seeks to bring about fundamental, long-term benefits. Such benefits include increased human and institutional capacity, and the creation of relationships that are essential components of science-informed decision-making for climate adaptation and beyond. Work underpinning this paper consists of a review of existing climate services guidance, and analyses of a survey of climate services stakeholders, and a climate information co-production process case study in Lusaka, Zambia. We identify elements needed to support complex, real-world decision-making that many existing climate services fail to sufficiently consider. We respond by introducing a framework (Tandem), which consists of structured elements and practical, guiding questions informed by empirical analysis. To lay the foundation for both science-informed policy and policy-informed science, the Tandem framework puts forward guidance to achieve three goals: 1) to improve the ways in which all participants work together to purposefully design transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes (co-exploration and co-production processes that bring together different knowledge types across the science-society interface); 2) to co-explore decision-relevant needs for the co-production of integrated climate information (i.e., decision-relevant climate and non-climate information); and, 3) to increase individual and institutional capacities, collaboration, communication and networks that can translate this information into climate-resilient decision-making and action.

Sustainability planning requires an understanding of social and physical systems and their interactions. However, there is a mismatch between the methods of the social sciences and those of the natural sciences. Although there have been numerous attempts to adapt the methods of the natural sciences for use in the social sciences, the results are usually unsatisfactory. Key features of societies such as institutions and power relationships, and of individuals such as the rich symbolic systems by which individuals transmit knowledge, do not lend themselves to the standard analytical methods of the natural sciences. We argue that rather than transfer the methods of one discipline to the other, an appropriate goal can be to seek "matching methods" that work at the boundary between the social and natural sciences. We discuss how knowledge elicitation tools (KnETs) can be used to develop matching methods. An explicit example is provided by combining a KnETs-derived decision tree with a physical water allocation model that was built using the scenario-based Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) software. We conclude that, through a relatively weak link, the social and physical domains can be effectively combined for integrated planning using matching methods, thereby permitting a more holistic approach to sustainable resource planning.

Resilience and vulnerability represent two related yet different approaches to understanding the response of systems and actors to change; to shocks and surprises, as well as slow creeping changes. Their respective origins in ecological and social theory largely explain the continuing differences in approach to social-ecological dimensions of change. However, there are many areas of strong convergence. This paper explores the emerging linkages and complementarities between the concepts of resilience and vulnerability to identify areas of synergy. We do this with regard to theory, methodology, and application. The paper seeks to go beyond just recognizing the complementarities between the two approaches to demonstrate how researchers are actively engaging with each field to coproduce new knowledge, and to suggest promising areas of complementarity that are likely to further research and action in the field.