Large-Scale Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Adaptation Research: Challenges and Insights.

An increasing number of research programs seek to support adaptation to climate change through the engagement of large-scale transdisciplinary networks that span countries and continents. While transdisciplinary research processes have been a topic of reflection, practice, and refinement for some time, these trends now mean that the global change research community needs to reflect and learn how to pursue collaborative research on a large scale. This paper shares insights from a seven-year climate change adaptation research program that supports collaboration between more than 450 researchers and practitioners across four consortia and 17 countries. The experience confirms the importance of attention to careful design for transdisciplinary collaboration, but also highlights that this alone is not enough. The success of well-designed transdisciplinary research processes is also strongly influenced by relational and systemic features of collaborative relationships. Relational features include interpersonal trust, mutual respect, and leadership styles, while systemic features include legal partnership agreements, power asymmetries between partners, and institutional values and cultures. In the new arena of large-scale collaborative science efforts, enablers of transdisciplinary collaboration include dedicated project coordinators, leaders at multiple levels, and the availability of small amounts of flexible funds to enable nimble responses to opportunities and unexpected collaborations.

Hotspots 2.0: Toward an integrated understanding of stressors and response options.

Integrated and transdisciplinary approaches are necessary in hotspots research where the intention is to influence policy and practice. Knowing that climate change will impact major ecosystem services and the sustainability of life support systems, a critical examination of the hotspot concept and approach is undertaken to pursue synergistic responses. Hotspots 2.0 embodies current thinking about planning towards multiple drivers of change and seeing human and natural systems as mutually inter-dependent and benefiting from integrated policy approaches. Such proposed adaptation interventions to inter-related stressors will complement biodiversity conservation, disaster risk reduction, and human well-being. Through a systematic review, we assess 114 relevant peer review cases to examine integrative responses to climatic and non-climatic vulnerabilities in various hotspot regions. Furthermore, we illustrate the utility of the Hotspots 2.0 approach using emerging insights from the 'Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia' in semi-arid regions, deltas, and glacier-fed river basin hotspots.

Monitoring in adaptive co-management: Toward a learning based approach.

The recognition of complexity and uncertainty in natural resource management has lead to the development of a wealth of conceptual frameworks aimed at integrated assessment and complex systems monitoring. Relatively less attention has however been given to methodological approaches that might facilitate learning as part of the monitoring process. This paper reviews the monitoring literature relevant to adaptive co-management, with a focus on the synergies between existing monitoring frameworks, collaborative monitoring approaches and social learning. The paper discusses the role of monitoring in environmental management in general, and the challenges posed by scale and complexity when monitoring in adaptive co-management. Existing conceptual frameworks for monitoring relevant to adaptive co-management are reviewed, as are lessons from experiences with collaborative monitoring. The paper concludes by offering a methodological approach to monitoring that actively seeks to engender reflexive learning as a means to deal with uncertainty in natural resource management.