A bottom-up approach to climate services from the Global South: the case of the CONICET Argentina My Climate Risk Hub

SÖRENSSON, ANNA A.; JULIETA CANNEVA; LUCÍA M. CAPPELLETTI; LEANDRO B. DÍAZ; FLORENCIA FOSSA RIGLOS; CARLA N. GULIZIA; VALERIA HERNANDEZ; MARÍA SOL HURTADO DE MENDOZA; JULIA MINDLIN; MARISOL OSMAN; DALIA PANZA; CAMILA PRUDENTE; JUAN RIVERA; FEDERICO ROBLEDO; DAIRA A. ROSALES; ROMINA RUSCICA; RODRIGO SAN MARTIN; ANTHONY SCHRAPFFER; NADIA TESTANI

Kigali

Conferencia; 2nd Open Science Conference of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP).; 2023

World Climate Research Programme (WCRP)

The WCRP lighthouse activity My Climate Risk (MCR) aims at developing and mainstreaming a bottom-up approach to regional and local climate risk to construct climate information that is fit for integration in decision making. MCR uses principally a case study approach and is organized in a non-hierarchical way in a network of communities of practice, fostering dynamic, exploratory and transdisciplinary environments. One year after  the kick-off of MCR there are eleven formalized communities of practice or “Regional Hubs” around the world. These Hubs comprise a variety of forms and modes of operation depending on the local interests and needs. The MCR CONICET Argentina Regional Hub (https://sites.google.com/view/mcrhubconicet) is constituted by researchers, university students and educators from different disciplines such as Anthropology, Biology, Climatology, Engineering and Physics. The participants are involved in different research projects aimed at promoting co-production to address local socio-economic challenges. Our Hub meets twice a month to share experiences and learn together through an interdisciplinary dialogue where listening and openness to exchange knowledge and experiences between disciplines is key. Recognizing the great diversity of users that different MCR Hubs engage with, the Argentinean Hub focuses on local communities and the public sector. Some of our projects have already co-produced knowledge and co-designed climate services with users, such as the development of a community rainfall monitoring network, the co-design of a smartphone application and co-production of a week-2 rainfall probabilistic prediction tool for small farmers activities within the framework of the CLIMAX project (http://www.climax-sa.org/). In our region there is a need to improve hydrometeorological services accessibility and interpretation. Therefore one of our objectives as a Hub is to bring to practice the MCR bottom-up approach to regional and local climate risk by starting a dialogue with regional hydrometeorological services and other scientific agencies engaged in generating meteorological and hydrological information for society. By participating in this poster cluster we hope to share our experiences with and learn from other initiatives from the Global South.