Developing plans group work

CCAFS-ILRI Workshop on Communications and Social Learning in Climate Change

8-10 May 2012 ILRI Campus, Addis Ababa

The value of social learning and communication in climate change (plenary discussion based on group work)

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Having moved quickly into the three intervention / research gap areas mentioned the day before, in this session participants stepped back to reflect on what they see as the real value of social learning and communication in climate change, for local decision-making. This discussion emphasized the importance of thinking about social learning and communication as a continuum between three learning loops: single (unilateral dissemination of information), double (reflection on communication practices) and triple loop learning (transformative change brought through multi-stakeholder social learning).

Some ideas from yesterday’s reflections

• We have discussed a lot about social learning but we didn’t talk about its linkage with climate change;
• What is the narrative of CCAFS with respect to climate change?
• The concept of engaging targeted audiences was missing in our discussion, we/you should identify targeted audiences;
• We should not be only focusing on climate science but more specifically on climate change adaptation;
• We have talked about policy, but not so much how we define the engagement with government structures.
• Still we are not clear enough: why does communication and social learning really matter for climate change?

Report back from Groups

• Social learning involves various elements like culture (and efforts to deal with multiple cultures), documentation process, taking it from community-based adaptation to ways to enforce reflective thinking;
• It includes lots of tools, approaches and techniques, it is unusual and unique; It is like having things put in the bucket and look at how it taken up from the bucket;
• Mis-communication: talking to grassroot people, the reliability and the need of working with communities, while climate change issues are changing all the time; This requires talking and closely working with communities;
• Best practices should be shared, what has been used should be documented and shown to the community, consistently sharing our best practices with the community;
• Social learning is expensive, it requires packaging the information and unpacking, this is very important;
• Different levels of social learning, e.g. communities of practice, where we have practitioners share their knowledge. Social learning needs different ways for practitioners to engage;
• Climate change requires actions, it should include a multi-stakeholder approach;
• The idea of really making sure that your work is plugging with other partners', how are other partners working, how the government works, process documentation, having stakeholders keep active, working with researchers, understanding climate change and reporting back.
• Finding right incentive mechanisms to enhance engagement;
• How is social learning involved in risk analysis?
• A lot of stakeholders are on different time frames, social learning helps to think about these different time frames;

Farmer focus on short time frames while we scientists focus on long term; How does that come together? It needs facilitation to bring them together, we are talking about perspectives in terms of community;

• We should build trust with farmers and politicians to let them understand science, we should improve trust and integrate incentives;
• Do we have the evidence that social learning works? We do have evidences that social learning has impacts, with farmer, households, extension workers through e.g. Farm Radio.
• What is the difference, uniqueness of social learning in climate change? It is the speed and the extent of change, collective work and action, it involves a group of people who are not usually working together;
• SL in CC brought about new instruments and options, like e.g. adaptation farming;
• Consistent change and uncertainty, collective action and pulling people together to discuss this issue, putting different actors together, the need to focus what is the alternate goal, like food security: This is talked about at national level but how to take it up to the global level?
• The bigger picture is not only about climate change: it should be about food security too!
• The issue of social differentiation is difficult but social learning could be a vehicle for this type of challenges;
• Where are the good facilitators? This could be a good chance for the CCAFS to look into, when setting up partnership criteria;
• Who learns? The farmers are the one who learn? We are driving the idea, facilitating it but farmers are the one who learn?
• Social learning is the means of facilitating the process of climate change adaption;
• Bringing up evaluation of social learning, the evidence needs a baseline, what adaptation changes are there for the last 20 years, there are survey questionnaires that CCAFS has developed and made available on the CCAFS website;
• Self-mobilization: Build on existing knowledge and platforms; we should encourage the use of existing social learning platforms, it motivates people working on this area. Any platforms has to be self-run;
• How do we use research for development?
• Across the CG network, there is plenty of research and expertise, this should be a baseline to think about, what other CG centers are working on this aspect?
• Social learning should merge with communication and look into communication tools also;
• Social learning seems to be separate from communications, but we should work with triple loops:

The single loop is about communication - how do we communicate to different target audiences; The second loop should look at what are best practices, goals and plan; The third loop is about transformations, social learning, the participatory engagement...

• Social learning contrasts with practical learning, building on adaptation as the facilitation and convening process;
• Whether SL processes are facilitated or not they should be iterative to interact with different stakeholders at different times;
• Involving farmers' experimentations, one way to do social learning is when individuals' experimental knowledge leads to collective experimental knowledge and collective actions.

The table below introduces single, double and triple loop learning...