Climate, stream flow prediction and water management in northeast Brazil: societal trends and forecast value

Broad, Kenneth; Pfaff, Alexander; Taddei, Renzo; Sankarasubramanian, A.; Lall, Upmanu; Filho, Franciso de Assis de Souza

doi:10.1007/s10584-007-9257-0

Cited by 51 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Case studies in the US and around the world have shown that institutions and organizational culture matter to the usability of information (102,109,113,(126)(127)(128)(129)(130)(131)(132)(133). For example, research found that organizations with more flexible decision-making frameworks (66) and those that insulate technocratic decision makers (134) are more likely to use information.…”

Section: Producer-user Interactions and Decision Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actionable Knowledge for Environmental Decision Making: Broadening the Usability of Climate Science

Kirchhoff

Lemos

Dessai

2013

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

422

271

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KeywordsScience-policy model; producer-user interaction; user typology; information usability; climate information use AbstractConsistently scholars have sought to characterize society's relationship to science, especially to understand how it shapes the way science is produced and used in decision making. These efforts spurred a rapid evolution in models of science-society interaction with growing levels of complexity both in terms of interdisciplinarity and involvement of stakeholders. Despite these efforts, the rate of use of science in decision-making remains below expectations. This suggests a persistent gap between production and use which, to date, efforts to re-think and restructure science production have not been able to surmount. We review the different models of science-society interaction and the emergence of new approaches to knowledge creation to understand how they have influenced the organization of knowledge production and application. We then examine

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Section: Producer-user Interactions and Decision Environmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actionable Knowledge for Environmental Decision Making: Broadening the Usability of Climate Science

Kirchhoff

Lemos

Dessai

2013

Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour.

422

271

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“…Additionally, if certain actors have overriding power over decisions, many stakeholders can become disinterested in participating (Broad et al, 2007). In this research, like Rigg's study of herders (Robin Rigg, 2002), I found that farm workers influenced the degree of perceived livestock depredation experience on farms and were therefore important actors in carnivore conservation.…”

Section: Is Participation the Holy Grail Of Conservation Interventions?mentioning

confidence: 69%

Understanding the human dimensions of coexistence between carnivores and people: A case study in Namibia

Rust¹

2018

Preprint

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Many carnivore populations were in decline throughout much of the 20 th century, but due to recent conservation policies, their numbers are stabilising or even increasing in some areas of the world. This, compounded with human population growth, has caused increased livestock depredation by carnivores, which threatens farmer livelihoods, particularly those in developing countries such as Namibia. How to resolve this so-called "conflict" between carnivores and livestock farmers remains challenging, in part because some mitigation strategies have proven somewhat ineffective or unacceptable. By using a case-study approach on the commercial farmlands of northcentral Namibia, I aimed to understand the complexity of the human dimensions affecting coexistence between carnivores and people in an unprotected working landscape. Specifically, my objectives were to 1) develop a participatory decisionmaking exercise to analyse the views of stakeholders on how they would like carnivores to be managed in unprotected lands, 2) understand how the media framed financial incentives to improve human-carnivore coexistence, and 3) determine if there were any underlying social, economic or political causes of negative human-carnivore interactions on commercial livestock farms.To answer objective 1, I developed a new decision-making exercise that combined Q-methodology and the Delphi technique to determine whether a diverse group of stakeholders could agree on how to manage carnivores on commercial farmland. A strong agreement was reached by participants: providing conservation education and training on livestock husbandry were acceptable and effective ways to improve coexistence with carnivores. This new also method highlighted areas of disagreement between stakeholders and showed that there were two different narratives on how carnivores should be managed. This method could be used by policy makers to help with participatory decision-making for resolving other conservation conflicts.To answer objective 2, I undertook content analysis of national newspapers to determine how the media framed articles on financial incentives to mitigate this conservation conflict. The most common (30%) financial incentive discussed was compensation -many (61%) of these articles framed compensation positively. Niki Rust © 2015However, upon categorising these articles into those where respondents were enrolled in compensation schemes compared with those who were not, a clear pattern emerged: articles were more likely (89%) to be framed ambivalently or negatively when respondents had experience of this financial incentive compared with respondents that did not. These results can help conservationists plan more effective communication interventions and anticipate issues that can affect the success of mitigation strategies.To answer objective 3, I undertook eight months of participant observation on livestock farms and interviewed 69 respondents and found that reported livestock depredation was associated with increased instances of poaching of wildl...

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“…Currently, however, there exists little evidence of direct forecast use in operations, especially in water resources management, even in regions of scarcity. This is often ascribed to water managers tendency to act in a risk averse manner, "poor" forecast skill or scale, difficulty in integrating forecasts into existing decision support systems, lack of focus on specific user needs, anticipated shifts in the water sector, management and political disincentives, individual and institutional inflexibility, behavioral effects, and informational constraints (Pulwarty and Redmond, 1997;Hamlet et al, 2002;Ritchie et al, 2004;Rayner et al, 2005;Broad et al, 2007;Johnston et al, 2007;Lemos, 2008;Millner, 2009;Ziervogel et al, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tailoring seasonal climate forecasts for hydropower operations

Block

2011

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Integration of seasonal precipitation forecasts into water resources operations and planning is practically nonexistent, even in regions of scarcity. This is often attributable to water manager's tendency to act in a risk averse manner, preferring to avoid consequences of poor forecasts, at the expense of unrealized benefits. Convincing demonstrations of forecast value are therefore desirable to support assimilation into practice. A dynamically linked system, including forecast, rainfall-runoff, and hydropower models, is applied to the upper Blue Nile basin in Ethiopia to compare benefits and reliability generated by actual forecasts against a climatology-based approach, commonly practiced in most water resources systems. Processing one hundred decadal sequences demonstrates superior forecast-based benefits in 68 cases, a respectable advancement, however benefits in a few forecast-based sequences are noticeably low, likely to dissuade manager's adoption. A hydropower sensitivity test reveals a propensity toward poor-decision making when forecasts over-predict wet conditions. Tailoring the precipitation forecast to highlight critical dry forecasts minimizes this inclination, resulting in 97% of the sequences favoring the forecast-based approach. Considering managerial risk preferences for the system, even risk-averse actions, if coupled with forecasts, exhibit superior benefits and reliability compared with risk-taking tendencies conditioned on climatology.

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Climate, stream flow prediction and water management in northeast Brazil: societal trends and forecast value

Cited by 51 publications

References 48 publications

Actionable Knowledge for Environmental Decision Making: Broadening the Usability of Climate Science

Actionable Knowledge for Environmental Decision Making: Broadening the Usability of Climate Science

Understanding the human dimensions of coexistence between carnivores and people: A case study in Namibia

Tailoring seasonal climate forecasts for hydropower operations

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