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News and Media
weADAPT joins effort for better collaboration
The Adaptation Academy, held annually in Cape Town by SEI, the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, and the Global Climate Adaptation Partnership, helps spread adaptation knowledge. SEI PHOTO/Anna Taylor.
The knowledge-sharing platform, led by SEI with numerous partners, could help reduce ‘portal proliferation’.
As more countries grapple with climate change, there is a growing demand for reliable information about adaptation for examples of successful initiatives. This has led to the creation of numerous online portals that seek to provide easy access to these resources.
But how do you tell them apart? Which is most useful? The proliferation of portals, some believe, may be creating confusion. To address this concern, 21 leading web resource sponsors, including SEI, gathered at a Climate and Development Knowledge Brokers Workshop in Eschborn, Germany, from 3 to 5 June to discuss ways to foster collaboration.
The workshop, hosted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and German Technical Cooperation (GIZ), included established players such as the Adaptation Learning Mechanism, Eldis, and the World Bank Climate Change Knowledge Portal, as well as regional initiatives and new programmes.
“This meeting was a rare opportunity to bring together many knowledge brokers who have been working on portal development for a long time and had lots of valuable lessons to share,” says Sukaina Bharwani, senior research fellow in SEI’s Oxford office and strategic and technical coordinator of weADAPT.
“The meeting facilitated some reflection on the key needs of our end users (different audiences identified by different portals) and whether we are in fact meeting these needs and how we can do better,” she adds.
New tools to support collaboration
Participants talked about ways to better connect users to other resources, using tools such as Google Custom Search, widgets, and RSS feeds. A particularly strong form of collaboration, it was noted, is sharing your platform with others, as weADAPT does.
“The underlying philosophy of weADAPT is that it is a truly collaborative shared space, allowing organisations to take advantage of the resources already developed by weADAPT, such as the Google Earth Adaptation Layer or the Climate Adaptation Knowledge Base,” Bharwani says. “They don’t have to reinvent the wheel to access this functionality – they simply create a customised view for their own knowledge networks.”
Bharwani also notes that using the weADAPT platform allows organisations to raise their own visibility within a larger network of users.
“This is a great incentive for further contribution and sharing of content,” she says. “We are very excited about these new developments, and look forward to continuing to improve the site in response to evolving user needs.”
Visit the weADAPT website.
Learn more about the Climate and Development Knowledge Brokers Workshop.
Read about the workshop on the Climate & Development Knowledge Network blog.
