There are two approaches, top down and bottom up, in the top down approach, which has been used, first you need to perform climate modeling, and then to go for impacts assessment, based on impacts, you need to plan for adaptation. As for example, let us say, you need to find agricultural policy, you need to first perform regional modeling and then crop modeling, compute future risk and then find the optimum policy...but one of the major limitation is that, scientists don't know what stakeholders like farmers really want. That gives birth to the bottom up approach. Here, farmers will ask certain questions, which they feel really useful for long term planning. Let us say, what is the possibility, that there will be 3 consecutive drought years in a region. The scientists need to find out, under what warming scenario, such situation will happen, and what is the probability. This will also make aware the farmers about the possibility of such occurrences...

By leveraging on the use of media. I believe some of the media corporations in Australia actually engage visiting scientists/ researchers to talk and share about their research progress and inform others as to how they can participate to make a real difference.

Working in the field of climate science and coastal adaption i feel there are two vital points which need to be propagated through the public:

1)The prime basis of research needs to be extensively expressed/propagated and the educated masses must be convinced with your way of research and implementation.

2)The uneducated classes may be brainwashed by making them known the historical consequences through visual graphics and well as presenting them the facts and figures in simplified manner

There are several ways you can do it, but my personal views are as follows: (a) identify vulnerable coastal communities, vulnerable sectors and vulnerable coastal areas that would be most impacted from climate related extreme events such as sea-level rise, cyclones; (b) than plan and develop and implement a community awareness, education and engagement programme with the support of local government (arranging community gathering/workshops/evening programme/farmers field programmes and highlighting the possible impacts of climate change on local food production (agriculture and fisheries), local water resources, local biodiversity, assets, infrastructure and human health etc). and some possible adaptation options (e.g. identifying heat, salt and salt tolerant crops/seeds, rain water harvesting to cope with climate change; mangrove restoration to reduce impacts on coastal areas from cyclones; building raised houses in coastal areas where sea-level is projected to rise etc.); (c) write up of simple fact sheets on climate change adaptation in both plain English and local languages and distributing such fact sheets to vulnerable communities; (d) directly working with vulnerable coastal communities. In your communication, you also need to highlight that communities need to adapt (adjust) to reduce or minimize impacts from climate change and accept new opportunities that arises due to climate change

Kind regards

Golam

There are two approaches, top down and bottom up, in the top down approach, which has been used, first you need to perform climate modeling, and then to go for impacts assessment, based on impacts, you need to plan for adaptation. As for example, let us say, you need to find agricultural policy, you need to first perform regional modeling and then crop modeling, compute future risk and then find the optimum policy...but one of the major limitation is that, scientists don't know what stakeholders like farmers really want. That gives birth to the bottom up approach. Here, farmers will ask certain questions, which they feel really useful for long term planning. Let us say, what is the possibility, that there will be 3 consecutive drought years in a region. The scientists need to find out, under what warming scenario, such situation will happen, and what is the probability. This will also make aware the farmers about the possibility of such occurrences...

Zeppel, H. (2012). Local adaptation responses in climate change planning in coastal Queensland. Australasian Journal of Regional Studies, 18(3), 341-361. http://eprints.usq.edu.au/22690/

http://www.anzrsai.org/page/publications/ajrs/ajrs-abstracts/vol18-no-3/

Zeppel, H. (2013). Local planning for climate adaptation in coastal Queensland. Queensland Coastal Conference 2013: Castles in the Sand, Townsville, 2-4 October 2013. http://eprints.usq.edu.au/24318/

http://www.qldcoastalconference.org.au/2013/pdf/ZeppelH.pdf

Climate Adaptation decision support Tool for Local Governments: CATLoG

http://www.nccarf.edu.au/publications/climate-adaptation-decision-support-tool-local-governments

Enhancing climate change communication: Strategies for profiling and targeting Australian interpretive communities

http://www.nccarf.edu.au/publications/enhancing-climate-change-communication-strategies

In British Columbia, Canada, there has been considerable activity on climate change adaptation at the local level, enabled by programs from national, provincial and regional levels. Here are two documents outlining adaptation activities, largely focused on planning through participatory approaches, including the use of visualization technologies, as well as legal dimensions:

http://www.retooling.ca/_Library/docs/WCEL_climate_change_FINAL.pdf

http://www.retooling.ca/_Library/docs/bc_community_adaptation_en.pdf

At the national level in Canada, knowledge sharing is enabled through several networks. One of these is the Adaptation Platform:

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/environment/impacts-adaptation/adaptation-platform/10027

Another national network in Canada is the Adaptation Community of Practice:

https://www.ccadaptation.ca/en/landing

Although our project is located in the Andes of South-America, the principles are still applicable. Have a look at:

Vidaurre de la Riva, M.; Lindner, A.; Pretzsch, J. (2013) Assessing adaptation - Climate change and indigenous livelihood in the Andes of Bolivia. Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development in the Tropics and Subtropics 144(2): 109-122

Lindner, A.; Pretzsch, J. (2013) An international network on climate change impacts on small farmers in the tropical Andes - Global conventions from a local perspective. Sustainable Agriculture Research 2(2): 92-98

Both papers are open-access and also available here from my page at Research-Gate.

You might also consider to have look here: http://weadapt.org/

This is a very useful platform on adaptation measures worldwide.

Hi Gil! This is the real problem for people living along coastal areas. Actually they are facing climate change problems e.g. coastal erosion, storm surge, and deforestation. I may say they to some extent are aware of impacts.What we can communicate with them is to bring to their attention on scenarios and its subsequences of further extreme events that may occur. During public participation process, we can translate scientific knowledge into plain language and easy to understand for general public.Then come up with local adaptation strategies and actions to be taken with public consensus.

Linking bottom up and top down approaches (meso approach) is essential or one easily misses the point. See http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-013-0498-3 Good example of communication to farmers are ‘Climate Field Schools’ running in Indonesia see http://www.preventionweb.net/english/professional/publications/v.php?id=7895

But THE MOST IMPORTANT THING: Climate scientists need to contain themselves to doing what they know how to do best, which is modelling climate; and need to leave communication of their science to other specialists (social scientists, communicators), who now very well how to communicate complex issues to people. Just think health: very complex scientific medical messages have been communicated to all segments of people in many countries extremely successfully for a very long time – successfully, among other thing, because there are communicated by public health specialists and not medical researchers!

The bottom up approaches.

Communication strategy should be dovetail with the easy to access items. Facebook use and other social media may be more productive besides organizing the youth conferences and spreading the massage with these youth brigade.

Promotion of traditional knowledge

I think encouraging key informants of every cities and communities to establish NGOs for informing them about climate change facts and challenges may be beneficial.