Making your research accessible

Announcing ASSAR’s Guest Blog Series: Climate Month

By 02/11/2017

We are excited to announce that November will be ‘Climate Month’ on Research to Action. The Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) research programme will be producing a series of blogs and hosting a Roundtable Webinar as part of a month-long series around the theme communicating climate change research.

Climate change is a pernicious problem and it can seem very difficult to communicate research findings and policy recommendations in a world where post-truth is the dominant media narrative and when cognitive dissonance means that we (as well as policymakers) cherry-pick evidence that supports our predisposed beliefs. To mark the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn this November ASSAR will unpack and explain their approach to getting climate change research into use.

ASSAR is an interdisciplinary research programme specifically focused on semi-arid regions, working across seven countries in India, East Africa, West Africa, and Southern Africa. It is a collaborative research programme led by the University of Cape Town, the University of East Anglia, the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Oxfam, and START.

The research is co-funded by the IDRC and DFID as part of the wider Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) initiative, which takes an open approach to sharing the lessons learned around generating research uptake and impact. CARIAA recently published its Research-into-Use Learning Guide to facilitate peer learning and to provide a bottom-up, experience-based toolkit for climate change researchers, as well as publishing a blog about the consortium’s approach to improving research impact.

Follow the action on social media using the hashtag #R2AClimateMonth and stay tuned for updates about the webinar on Thursday 30 November at 14:00 GMT.