Identifying the barriers or facilitating factors to climate change adaptation research uptake

This exploratory study seeks to understand how climate change research is used, or not used, by Yukon communities. Our main question is: what are the things that get in the way, or help, the use of climate change adaptation research.

Overview

By reviewing the Yukon climate change adaptation plans and focusing on one plan for interviews, we hope to identify the barriers or facilitating factors to climate change adaptation research uptake.

This research hopes to identify ways that research is or isn’t included in climate change adaptation planning and implementation. If we are successful in doing so, these factors could benefit other communities who are either not benefiting from scientific research as much as they could, or who are undertaking the process of climate change adaptation. Another potential benefit is to shed light on how to make climate change information studied by researchers accessible to communities.

Insight into how research is used helps to ensure that research funding is used efficiently, with greatest benefit to society. The study of northern climate change adaptation is an area in which many forms of knowledge are acknowledged and blended, but there are many opportunities to improve this relationship and use this field as a role model to other types of research.

This exploratory study will be used to inform the scoping of a larger project in Alaska.

Project Team

Meagan Grabowski, Northern Climate ExChange, Yukon Research Centre, Yukon College

Dr. Doug Clark, Centennial Chair in Human Dimensions of Environment & Sustainability, School of Environment & Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan

Funders

Northwest Boreal Landscape Conservation Cooperative: Anchorage, AK