Identifying gaps between scientific and local knowledge in climate change adaptation for northern European agriculture

When I saw the title of this preprint, it got me really excited, because it touches upon one of my favourite problems, that of the tensions between theory and practice, knowing-why and knowing-how, knowing from testimony or knowing first-hand.

Now, these categories are, probably, more familiar to some than to others, so it’s worth pointing out, for instance, that as social beings, we are never confined only to our own devices; lots of things we know (or assume to know) are thanks to our family, friends, colleagues, wider community and culture. Science is a wonderful example of that. The experiment one does in the lab today, materially and conceptually, most often relies on experiments done elsewhere in the world. This flow of knowledge is always a conjunction of one’s first-person knowledge (often practical) with someone else’s testimony, which, in its turn, is also a mix of first-person knowledge with someone else’s testimony, and so on and so forth. On the one hand, this points to an image of knowledge as a complex, entangled and constantly rewoven web; or a fabric; or a patchwork (made from patches of specialised knowledge). On the other hand, there can be gaps and tensions between different specialised knowledge-perspectives.

The agricultural science perspective and farmer’s perspective on climate adaptation are at the focus of this preprint. The authors make it clear why this is a question of the utmost significance. At the end of the day, farmers are the key players in food production. They are the ones who know the process of growing crops the most intimately. They are also the ones who are practically coping with the changing environmental conditions of food growth. So, if we are to devise and implement efficient adaptive strategies, sensitive to the challenges on the ground as well as involving climate-smart farming solutions, it is imperative that we co-develop shared knowledge of the multifaceted climate challenge. Mapping knowledge gaps is a step in that direction.

How does one capture those? That is a tricky part. Academic researchers organise their knowledge exchange around shared tools and conventions, such as peer-reviewed articles (and preprints!), which can be analysed in bulk. For farmers, musicians, chess-players, plumbers and practitioners of most other trades, writing peer-reviewed research articles is not part of the professional routine. One needs some kind of content, data that can be compared meaningfully between the two parties. And, well, in a nutshell, the solution was to literally make scientists and farmers depict a map of factors relevant to the problem at hand. This form of diagramming has a fancy name, Influence Diagram, draws its academic lineage from the concepts of mental models and probabilistic analysis, but beyond that, I think the magic of it lies in that diagramming is a low-threshold tool for setting up a conceptual dialogue between different professional communities.

The researchers behind this work (all of them are from Sweden) invited local farmers for a participative semi-structured workshop. The aim of the workshop was to produce diagrams that would faithfully represent farmers’ understanding of crisis-management and adaptive strategies related to the event of the 2018 heatwave and the drought in Scania, a region of Sweden. Prior to that, the researchers produced similar diagrams of their own that drew on the insights from a scoping review of scientific literature on the same event (Figure 1).

 

Figure 1. Influence diagrams depicting crisis management in crop production during the 2018 combined heat and drought event as seen by scientists (A) and farmers (B). The nodes represent decisions (green rectangles), chance variables that can be influenced by the decision-maker (light blue ovals), variables that cannot be directly influenced by the decision-maker (dark blue rounded rectangles), and objectives (red hexagons). CC BY 4.0 license.

Comparing the two diagrams, some curious differences surfaced. For example, scientists tended to focus on generalisable technology-oriented solutions, while the farmers’ suggestions and actions were more concrete and grounded in the socio-economic and administrative specificities of their farms. Moreover, farmers identified things beyond their individual farms (for example, collective drain-management) as important variables for successful adaptation. This potentially indicated their understanding of adaptive decision-making as collective and multi-actor practice, rather than (just) a technological problem. This is an interesting observation, since, as the authors note, “historically, agricultural knowledge transfer followed a top-down model, i.e. considering knowledge from authorities and scientists, while marginalising farmers’ insights” . The danger of this, as the study illustrates, is it may lead to favouring technological solutions, while ignoring the social and practical dimensions of the problem.

Overall, these observations aren’t meant to decide who is right or wrong. Rather, they invite one to explore the ways forward that would combine the two perspectives. Indeed, as the authors suggest, their exploratory study is meant to help formulate further context-sensitive questions, which can be tested through quantitative surveys. Such an enquiry would provide an empirical basis for more adequate policy-making and communication.

And this marks another reason why I really liked this work. To my mind, the study illustrates that in the face of multifaceted challenges, we need to practice genuinely interdisciplinary and creative thinking, in which natural sciences, social sciences and humanities complement each other.

 

doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/prelights.41122

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