Presentation from the OECD Workshop “Approaches to reducing and managing the risk of losses and damages from climate change” (15 April 2021) - Session 1, Rosalind Cornforth, Director, Walker Institute, Reading University

1. © University of Reading 2020
Decision-making under
uncertainty
Storylines of climate risk and pathways to action in East Africa
Prof Rosalind Cornforth, Director of Walker Institute, University of Reading
Thursday 15th April 2021
r.j.cornforth@reading.ac.uk
on behalf of and with thanks to the wider team: Ted Shepherd, Ross Fairgreave,
Heather Plumpton, Elena Tarnavsky and Lindsay Todman

2. © University of Reading 2020
Key challenges for adaptation decision-making
• 5 mega-trends are changing the way we live
and do business that will frame the eventual
mitigation-adaptation portfolio at sector,
national and international scales.
• Climate change is just one (important)
contextual issue.
• Uncertainty in physical environmental
variables (e.g. rainfall), and socio-economic
fabric of human livelihoods
• Scale gap between global climate projections
and local impacts – economic, governance
and social factors interact with changing
climate leading to uncertainty
• Given these challenges, we must change
course and implement a decision-centric
(not scenario-centric) framework
www.walker.ac.uk
Source: Marchau et al. (2019). Springer

3. Addressing uncertainty through causal networks,
storylines and pathways to action
www.walker.ac.uk 3

4. © University of Reading 2020
Causal networks for under-researched crops
• Causal networks are a way of representing a
set of key variables and how they interact to
cause an effect.
• These networks provide a framework to bring
together information from multiple different
sources, including observations, models, and
expert knowledge within a context of deep
uncertainty.
• Rebalances power dynamic – local
stakeholders/scientists are the local experts
and drive the development of ‘home-grown’
climate services (cf Schumacher)
• This is critical for under-researched crops such
as sweet potato where large datasets are
lacking.
www.walker.ac.uk 4
See also: Young et al. (2019). Storylines for decision-making: climate and food
security in Namibia. Climate and Development. 10.1080/17565529.2020.1808438

5. © University of Reading 2020
Storylines of future climate change
www.walker.ac.uk 5
• Storylines of plausible, physically consistent climate futures can be
generated for a local area or region
• e.g. climate storylines for East Africa developed as part of the
HyCRISTAL project using accessible language based in the present
e.g. for rainfall
• “In Future 1 in 2050, it is much wetter than it used to be a few
decades ago. The total amount of rainfall in the Long Rains has
increased by around 25% and the Short Rains are about 20%
wetter on average.”
• Storylines demonstrated a range of possible changes (capturing
uncertainty) and allowed local experts to qualitatively link climate
change impacts to impacts in rural areas.
• Climate-related risks become meaningful for communities and
decision makers in a specific context -> links to policies
Source: Burgin et al., (2019). FCFA HyCRISTAL Climate
Narrative Rural Infographic and Brief. Zenodo

6. © University of Reading 2020
Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways
www.walker.ac.uk 6
• What policies would be needed under these alternative
storylines of future climate risk?
• Are adaptation actions applicable across multiple futures?
• Identify ‘adaptation tipping points’
• When does a policy reach its ‘sell-by date’?
• The “changing condition” may be one or more of the global
megatrends. Amenable to Bayesian analysis and is scale
independent
• Build pathways through policy actions that keep future
options open
• When do we need to switch pathways?
• The approach can also be used to visualize existing
strategies, policy pathways and option sets
• The most promising pathways together, constitute the
adaptation map.
Source: AGWA (2020), adapted from Haasnoot (2013).

7. © University of Reading 2020
Example storyline of impacts on livelihoods and
food security
www.walker.ac.uk 7
Climate storyline
1: rainfall
increases by 25%
How are livelihoods
and food security
impacted?

8. © University of Reading 2020
Modelling policy interventions and adaptation
tipping points
www.walker.ac.uk 8
Climate storyline
1: rainfall
increases by 25%
How are livelihoods
and food security
impacted?
Policy: provide
clean planting
materials

9. Approaches for generating adaptation pathways
www.walker.ac.uk 9
Its about making the connection between “hard science” observational data and models, and the effect on
people living their lives, then they can make effective decisions despite the cascade of uncertainty
Source: Haasnoot (2013)

10. Enabling robust
decisions for rural
adaptations
This requires:
i) An in-depth engagement process with
a multi-stakeholder approach,
contextualized by local circumstances
ii) The generation and synthesis of
interdisciplinary knowledge from
across the physical and social sciences
iii) A pathway to influencing governance
decision making through capacity
building, advocacy and participatory
communications
Source: James Acidiri, Petty, Celia, Petty, Rosalind Cornforth Cornforth, Rosalind Jane, Clegg, Dai, Ainslie, Andrew, Walker, Grady, … Clenaghan, Andrew. (2019, October
19). Uganda - Synthesising Evidence for Targeted National Responses to Climate Change (Version v1.0). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3510110
4/30/21
10
Policy
Insight

11. R.J. Cornforth, C. Petty, and G. Walker, 2021: Supporting Climate-Resilient Planning at National and District Levels: A Pathway to Multi-stakeholder
Decision-Making in Uganda. Climate Risk in Africa: Adaptation and Resilience, 131--145. 11
Integrated information is helping EA govts
target assistance with optimal use of limited
funds.
• National (long-term): Interventions
introduced into the National Environment
Management Bill (NEMA) & National
Development Plans; Implementation of
the KJWA; (NDP2) and Farmers given seats
on national committees
• Sub-national (short-term): Local farmers
given places on district budgetary
planning committee and budgetary
increases provided for extensions services
Enabling robust
decisions for rural
adaptation

12. © University of Reading 2020
An interdisciplinary, systems-based approach to
support decision-making under uncertainty
www.walker.ac.uk 12
• Combining causal networks, multiple storylines and dynamic adaptive pathways
with a partnership pathway to influencing decision-making through targeted
capacity building, advocacy and participatory communications -
• Bridges the gap between national climate change and context-specific impacts to
support policy action on adaptation here and now.
Adaptation action

13. Thank you for
listening!
Please do feel free to get in contact:
r.j.cornforth@reading.ac.uk
www.walker.ac.uk
13
Source: Marchau et al. (2019). Springer