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20 June 2006

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Please see Appendix I for a Glossary of Acronyms Used in this document.

Workshop Report:
Appendix III
Summary of CCSP Workshop and Decision Support Survey

Synopsis

An extensive survey was sent to all workshop participants with the purposes of learning how to improve any future workshops and to gain additional insight into how CCSP might improve its decision support activities.

The comments received from 56 respondents constitute valuable set of inputs.   Below is a very brief overview of these comments.

CCSP Workshop

The first part of the survey dealt with the November workshop. The respondents generally felt that it was worthwhile, with 86% saying they would attend a similar workshop in the future and 62% saying that the workshop was “above average” or “among the best.” The most highly rated session was the poster session and the lowest rated session was the first plenary. Respondents reported that the networking/off-line discussions were the most valuable aspect of the workshop. The aspect that was of least value was the set of plenary talks by politicians/political appointees. The two main improvements that attendees would like to see for future workshops of this type are more opportunity for discussion/participation during the sessions and more interdisciplinary, cross-cutting breakout sessions. One of the workshop’s main challenges was in attracting stakeholders and decision makers. There were several recurring recommendations for how to improve engagement with these communities:

1. users should be among the workshop planners and/or included in the early stages of the planning process for future workshops of this type;
2. researchers and CCSP representatives should make presentations at meetings of end users; and
3. regionally- or sector-focused workshops should be convened.

CCSP Decision Support Activities

The second half of the survey concerned CCSP’s decision support activities, specifically regarding assessments and the utilization of climate information. One of the most frequently recurring recommendations regarding assessments was that they should be framed with more user input and involvement to increase salience, legitimacy, and trust. This dialogue should begin when an assessment is initiated to maximize opportunity for input from stakeholders and increase understanding of the assessment process. Regarding the utilization of climate information, one of the most common themes was that the information must be communicated in a way that stakeholders and decision makers can understand and respond. This process should encourage the role of intermediaries and bridging organizations to work with users to help them develop the capacity to use the information effectively, in part through relating the information to their unique decision-making approaches. Several respondents made suggestions for educating users and improving the ease of access to climate information. A wide range of other recommendations were made for ways in which the Program’s decision support activities could be improved.