Publication

The Adaptation Knowledge Platform (AKP), and the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN) are actively facilitating climate change adaptation at local, national and regional scales in Asia and the Pacific; knowledge management being one of their core activities. As part of this effort, the web portal ‘Climate Change Adaptation in Asia and the Pacific’ was launched as a collaborative effort amongst the Adaptation Knowledge Platform, APAN, the United Nations Development Programme’s Adaptation Learning Mechanism and the Stockholm Environment Institute’s WeADAPT. Noted amongst these partners has been the proliferation of knowledge management initiatives, yet many lack collaboration between the producers and users of adaptation knowledge. In response, the Adaptation Knowledge Management (AKM) workshop aimed at identifying and linking knowledge partners together to generate and share knowledge in a way that promotes dialogue and improves the exchange and use of knowledge.

Through various interactive sessions,  knowledge management practices are becoming dynamic and timely. Knowledge management actors are engaging more in the generation of adaptation knowledge by supporting and or conducting research and workshops – to synthesizing and disseminating this in the form of policy briefs, news releases, even through mobile knowledge centers. Yet, challenges still exist around knowledge generation, how such lends to content and contextual needs, and how knowledge promotion can further the active use of such in practice and in decision-making processes at all levels of society, and across sectors.

Recognized by workshop participants is that climate change adaptation planning requires the merger of specific community level and national level knowledge. This poses a challenge to many national level planners and decision-makers who are reluctant to make use of both knowledge banks, subsequently leading to a less -than-capable plan that may also carry an inherent high degree of risk resulting from the exclusion of local level knowledge.