PhD defence

Best of Both Worlds: Co-Producing Climate Services that Integrate Scientific and Indigenous Weather and Seasonal Climate Forecast for Water Management and Food Production in Ghana

Summary:

Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face many challenges when making farming decisions due to unexpected changes in weather and climate. Access to hydroclimatic information can potentially assist them to adapt. Yet, in Ghana, farmers generally do not find the information useful for their farm-level decision making. In response, my thesis proposed a framework for a second generation climate services that have the potential to facilitate the co-production of relevant and accurate weather and seasonal climate forecast information and manages user expectation while strengthening the collaboration between information providers and users. Furthermore, this thesis found that forecast reliability and usefulness can be improved if indigenous forecast data are quantitatively collected and integrated with scientific meteorological forecast using a proposed integrated probability forecast method. Findings from the thesis contribute to the call for a more integrated, co-learning, and co-production approach to climate services that move away from the current focus on science-driven and user-informed climate services. Results in this thesis is relevant for managing the impact of climate variability and change, particularly because it includes the knowledge of indigenous peoples which is often overlooked.