Climate Action Transdisciplinarity in Education and Research

In a world increasingly affected by climate change, the CATER initiative identifies a critical shortcoming: existing climate services often lack societal engagement and are ill-suited to local realities and user needs. In response, CATER unites African and European academic communities with a clear mission – connecting climate science to actionable strategies. In CATER, we challenge conventional climate services approaches that typically position local communities as passive recipients, reserving expertise for international specialists. Our focus on transdisciplinarity fosters active participation from the outset, reshaping the traditional roles of climate information producers and users. This more inclusive and socially engaged approach is essential for effective climate services in Europe and Africa. By involving governments, organizations, and local communities, we aim to deepen the understanding of climate risk management. CATER aims to dismantle and encourage collaboration among students, early-career researchers, and frontline climate change practitioners. Our goal is to equip participants with novel skills and promote a culture of co-production and transdisciplinary thinking. Amplifying the voices of Global South communities, who bear the brunt of climate change, is crucial for creating effective and just adaptation strategies. These voices, often sidelined, are essential for developing strategies that are not only effective but also just. In collaboration with the EU project CONFER, we conducted the first CATER school in Kongoni, Kenya, in 2023, with 21 students and approximately a dozen lecturers from 18 countries. The school’s gender and disciplinary diversity—spanning social and natural sciences—fostered rich transdisciplinary discussions: the school became a melting pot of ideas and learning, promoting a holistic approach to climate services. The daily lectures covered topics like climate risk management, climate prediction, climate justice, co-production of climate information, ethics in climate research, environmental policy, career development, grant writing, article development, and the use of serious games for educational purposes. Morning sessions led by students provided significant learning opportunities for lecturers. Another highlight was the afternoon group work where students created games tackling complex climate change decision-making scenarios. This hands-on experience, highly valued by the participants, honed collaboration skills and provided a deeper understanding of improving climate services’ production, access, and use. Our 2024 virtual workshop summarized lessons from the 2023 school, reviewed student evaluations, and gathered tips for future improvements. Feedback prompted us to better integrate local contexts and include more African voices among the teaching staff. Consequently, the 2024 school will be co-hosted by the Arusha Climate and Environmental Research Centre, with two new African scholars joining the staff. While participant evaluations are an established tool for assessing impact and quality, researchers at CNRS and MET Norway have taken this one step further. They have developed a mixed-methods evaluative tool that more robustly assesses the impact of the CATER school’s learning environment on the participants’ transdisciplinary perspectives and understandings. This ‘Q-methodology’ will enable us to attribute clear impacts to the CATER school, reflecting on the causal link between transdisciplinary learning environments and improved educational outcomes. Additionally, many participants cited ‘networking’ as one of the most valuable aspects of the school. To support such networking post-schools, we have initiated an alumni program for students and lecturers, and the students themselves are organizing activities to maintain the momentum from the first school. Specifically, they have organized four webinars, and of real significance, a small funding pot was made available for the alumni to support relevant interdisciplinary work in line with the CATER ethos and project aims. Two projects received funding, maximizing the spill-over effects of CATER with interdisciplinary research taking place in both South America and Eastern Africa. Both projects are expected to produce reports and publications. The alumni network will expand with participants from the 2024 school, fostering more collaborative activities. The next school will be held in Arusha, Tanzania, in October 2024. While maintaining a consistent curriculum, new topics like AI in climate forecasting will be introduced, keeping CATER at the forefront of climate risk discourse. We view CATER as more than a project; it is an emerging movement transcending boundaries. Through education and collaboration, we aim to bridge theory and practice and sow the seeds for a more inclusive society in climate adaptation.

CATER builds on existing collaborations in the CONFER Horizon 2020 project, in which we co-develop climate services for East Africa with regional stakeholders. Based on our experiences in CONFER and other initiatives, we have come to challenge the notion that climate services are a one-way delivery of data from a ‘producer’ to an ‘end user’. In reality, the uptake of climate information leading to climate action in any setting requires extensive and iterative two-way engagement across sectors and disciplines, which is usually referred to with a broad brush as ‘co-production’. Our unique consortium from Norway, South Africa and France will work with students, practitioners, businesses, and not least between ourselves (researchers and educators) to: (1) Move science into action and vice versa by developing immersive annual schools focusing on climate action. This will be an arena where the students and lecturers will, together, engage with topics in the emerging intersection of climate research and practical climate adaptation, enhancing their capability to link climate research to real-world practice. (2) Organise annual workshops reaching within and beyond our own communities. The overarching focus will be on cultivating a community of practice to enhance climate action and decision-making capacity, by planning and evolving the school programme, and developing joint research ideas, proposals, and papers. (3) Promote and facilitate exchanges of people between our countries by providing seed money for further funding through applications to public exchange programmes. We mean to take a world-leading position by nurturing a cohort of academics able to think beyond the confines of academia to clarify the science-society divide between research and practice in climate adaptation, and by making voices of the South louder and more confident in international settings.