The challenge

To catalyse and promote informed decisions on adaptation and mitigation to climate change based on relevant geographical available information.

The solution is designed to respond to:

– Limited access of information both geographic and alpha numeric regarding climate change.

– Relate geographical information with implementation options.

– Create a portfolio of adaptation and mitigation actions.

– Make climate change implementation easy for everyone

A common problematic in decision making regarding climate change is the difficulty to get to stakeholders, decision makers and community with information they find useful to engage in a climate change project or initiative. At the same time the rising interest in climate change allows for the involvement of all sorts of actors to both increase the response capacity of the population and in reductions of GEI.

The idea surged from the need of a clear climate change diagnostics easy to understand and that gave insights in to implementation of concrete actions. Furthermore, to draw explicit relations between what is going on in terms of vulnerability assessments and inventories of GEI with concrete actions is an approach that has just been considered broadly. Therefore, the proposal aims to be more specific with this relation thanks to geographical information that relates a specific portfolio with a specific climate change condition.

The idea

To develop a tool in a web platform of easy access and navigability that includes geographic information related to climate change with a portfolio of actions to implement according to the challenges and opportunities of the territories and stakeholders.

The solution is composed of four key elements:

– Web interphase designed to guide the user through the different strategies of mitigation an adaptation.

– Geographic visor that connects in real time with the national map depository of relevant climate change information through integration services.

– Portfolio of actions linked to geographical information through a system of indicators that allows to establish a key or filter between actions and information.

– Administrator module that allows to scale up the system according to the information needs

The hypothesis is that closing the gap between technical information and project ideas, action will take place. The expected impact is to contribute first to the understanding of punctual challenges and opportunities of adaptation and mitigation to climate change and second to relate information with project ideas in order to turn them in to real action.

There is demand for this kind of solution thanks to the increasing awareness on climate change and the commitments and targets that key actors have to achieve subject. In this regard the market is already stablished. The web platform is already available (http//accionclimatica. minambiente.gov.co). This version is updatable thanks to the administrator module.

For Colombia; and from what we have seen around the world, this is the first platform adopting this comprehensive framework, similar initiatives just look either the geographic component or a set of actions, but the integrated approach is the innovative component in this tool.

The barriers to innovation – and the solutions

Lack of structured applied methodologies in order to address climate change data and to couple it with guidance to implementation

– Lack of applied methodologies to analyse the information in a systematic way for the web tool

– Lack of data bases of climate change information for the country

– Low capacity to structuring and managing the information

– Low and not interconnected infrastructure to manage the information about climate change

Key external barriers for enabling the proposed solution:

– Difficulty to have access to centralized information of climate change, causing a poor understanding of the subject.

– Low engagement of stakeholders as civil society, local governments, private sector probably due to lack access to consistent information.

– No mandate to produce and share information about plans and projects of climate change

– How mission-critical are the roadblocks for the suggested solutions (slowing down vs. killing solution)?

– Lack in infrastructure and capacities slow down and make more complex the design of the solution

– Decoupling of implementation with information in decision making processes.

Potential ways to address these barriers include:

– Strengthening the technical capacities in relation with climate change analysis and decision making

– Strengthening infrastructure capacity and facilitate interconnection between different systems

The way forward

The roadmap for going forward implies innovations to overcome barriers as well as to strengthen infrastructure capacities and methodologies to bring key information to the decision-making process.

Next steps include:

– Automation of some processes to facilitate access to useful information to decision-makers

– Incorporating more information, mainly sectoral and detailed scale to improve analysis

– Sufficient infrastructure and ensuring the needed capacities to have sustainability

– Growing infrastructure capacity and expanding the sharing of information processes

Key stakeholders include:

– Private sector: provide information and give feedback about their needs of information for their decision making processes

– Government institutions: address barriers about information management, access and coordination with other actors

– Group of technical experts: develop and improve applied methodologies in order to close the gap between information and action

New ways of working essential to overcoming roadblocks:

– Innovative methods to manage the information and to show it in a more useful way to people

– Using a wider scope of information and strategies

– Exploring and understanding perceptions of information and needs of decision-making

– Innovative ways to improve access to information and understanding of climate change through the functionalities of the tool

– Involvement of all stakeholders

– Access to information

– Sufficient infrastructure and capacities

Systemic changes needed include:

– Thinking about climate change and the need of everyone’s action

– Improving information management practices

– Strengthening technical capacities

– Allocating resources to climate change management information