2.2.1. Knowledge generation and use: what does this include?

Production of adaptation knowledge has been active across Europe in recent years. Climate change adaptation has become the core theme in many EU and national research programmes (e.g. CIRCLE-2; CLIMSAVE; KLIMZUK; Knowledge for Climate; SNAC) and will continue to be the focus of future research (e.g. Horizon 2020 will address climate change adaptation namely in the Societal Challenges "Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials"). Additionally an increasing number of countries across Europe have conducted risk or vulnerability assessments covering different sectors and multiple scales at the national and sub-national level.

Such activities generate robust and reliable scientific evidence which forms the knowledge base needed for well-informed policy decisions. The importance of having "better informed decision-making" is highlighted in the EU Climate Change Adaptation Strategy which includes this as one of its three main objectives (EC, 2013). Scientific knowledge, however, needs to be combined with practical and bureaucratic knowledge (Edelenbos et al., 2011). Cooperation between scientists, policy actors and other stakeholders such as civil and business NGOs is fundamental not only to ensure that researchers generate the scientific-technical information needed primarily by policy actors, but also to support the effective communication, dissemination and finally use of relevant knowledge.

So far there are several examples illustrating the collaboration between scientists and other actors in jointly developing adaptation policies and defining risk and vulnerabilities through assessments (e.g. Mitter et al., 2014). Nevertheless, there is still a range of factors that may restrict co-production of adaptation knowledge (Edelenbos et al., 2011) and hence its integration into policies. These include, but are not restricted to, the diverse backgrounds and interests of the actors involved in the production of scientific-technical information relevant to climate change adaptation (hereafter called 'knowledge generation') and the utilisation of such information to inform policy decisions (hereafter called 'knowledge use'), the nature of scientific information and other constraints (e.g. cognitive, institutional or legal) (Clar et al., 2013; Moss et al., 2013; Füssel and Hilden, 2014, In press)¹. This suggests that knowledge generation alone may not adequately support implementation of adaptation and thus its influence on adaptation action needs to be assessed cautiously (see Key Topic 1).

Definitions of key terms

[1] For a systematic literature review on the factors that might constrain the development and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies see Biesbroek et al. (2013)