COREDAR: A coastal climate service framework on sea-level rise risk communication for adaptation policy planning

Abstract

Accelerated sea-level rise (SLR) is a major long-term outcome of climate change leading to increased inundation of low-lying areas and put global cities and coastal communities at greater risk. Building capacities at the community level to address the challenges of SLR is an important first step towards adaptation policy planning and decision-making. Building capacity through risk communication is a bottleneck challenge to translate complex climate science into policy and actions. To meet these challenges, this paper has put forth the research question as what information do the coastal stakeholders need and how does it need to be communicated in the context of SLR and to build capacities that favor for effective SLR policy planning and decision-making at the local level. As a result, we have evolved COREDAR (COmmunicating Risk of sea-level rise and Engaging stakeholDers in framing community-based Adaptation strategies), a climate service capacity building framework that provides an important exploratory study, examining the SLR risk communications and community-based adaptation, extending and clarifying certain findings within the current SLR literature. The framework highlight the need to consider the relevance of addressing SLR risk communication in a systemic and holistic approach that integrates science, society, and policy in SLR research, whilst at the same time pointing to some interesting directions for engaging local communities in the decision-making process for framing adaptation strategies that are community-centric. Importantly, this framework emphasizes the significance of climate communication strategies and use of climate information in policy planning and decision-making as one of the potential climate services for SLR risk research.