Improving technical information use: what can be learnt from a manager's perspective?

Community climate resilience in Cambodia

Building resilience is a critical response to climate change. Developing countries are the most vulnerable to climate change, yet planning rarely considers how broader community development interventions can enhance resilience and support development. One solution is resilience assessment. However, few assessment frameworks exist that are sufficiently simple to empower communities to build resilience and take ownership of adaptation efforts. This article provides an example of a 27-question framework applied with two Cambodian communes (communities) to assess and understand trends in resilience over time. It is structured around community development outcomes of economic development, environmental quality, infrastructure that matches demands, community self-reliance and capacity to adapt to climate change; it also assesses how inputs and planning contribute to these outcomes. Longitudinal analyses reveal improvements over time driven primarily by commodity values. However, the sustainability of some of these improvements is questionable given volatile commodity markets and land degradation. Oversensitivity in the assessment is acknowledged as awareness increases over time, which can be conflated with poor performance. Maladaptive pathways may be unavoidable without building resilience by attending to broader community development issues, e.g. psychological wellbeing and education on alternative livelihoods. This article makes a significant contribution to community resilience by providing a simple resilience assessment framework that has demonstrably empowered communes to adapt to change. It is novel in the use of assessment design and process principles that build reflection on the drivers of resilience and development. Critical issues remain in the power dynamics of aid dependence, weakening of family bonds and patron-client relationships that affect resilience building in Cambodia.

The User, not the Tool: Perceptions of Credibility and Relevance Affect the Uptake of Prioritisation

Prioritisation methods have been used in conservation planning for over 20 years. The scientific literature focuses on the technical aspects of prioritisation, providing limited information on factors affecting the uptake of priorities. We focused on the Back on Track species prioritisation program in Queensland, Australia, used to prioritise species conservation efforts across Queensland from 2005. The program had low uptake by intended users. Our study aimed to identify the perceived limitations in the technical-scientific quality of this species-based prioritisation process and its outcomes in terms of credibility (scientific adequacy of the technical evidence) and relevance (of information to the needs of decision-makers). These criteria have been used to understand the uptake of scientific information in policy. We interviewed 73 key informants. Perceptions of credibility were affected by concerns related to the use of expert judgement (rather than empirical evidence) to assess species, impressions that key experts were not included in the planning process, and the lack of confidence in the information supporting prioritisation. We identified several trade-offs and synergies between the credibility and relevance of priorities to potential users. The relevance of the output plans was negatively affected by the lack of clarity about who were potential users and implementers of the priorities identified. We conclude with recommendations to enhance the credibility and relevance of such initiatives.