SEI INITIATIVE

The SEI Initiative on Climate Services focuses on creating a Participatory Framework for Climate Services (PFCS) to better connect climate science with the practical needs of users, ranging from national governments to smallholder farmers. The initiative is structured around four work packages: understanding user needs, exploring collaborative co-generation processes, improving communication methodologies, and developing a community learning space via the weADAPT platform. It draws on interdisciplinary research and case studies from both industrialized and developing countries to ensure climate information is timely, relevant, and accessible.

• The primary goal of the initiative is to develop a new Participatory Framework for Climate Services (PFCS), which will be informed by five key activities: understanding decision-making support, exploring institutional arrangements for knowledge co-production, evaluating effective communication formats, building capacity, and co-evaluating services with users.
• Climate services are intended to resolve the 'flood' of overwhelming information and the 'dearth' of specific, scale-appropriate data, such as when a municipal manager finds only national-level projections instead of city-specific flood risks.
• Effective climate services rely on several essential components, including trust, credibility, legitimacy, sustained dialogue, the co-production of knowledge, and an actor-oriented approach that accounts for the differing values and priorities of users.
• The initiative utilizes case studies in developing countries to explore the co-generation of climate services, specifically through 'city learning labs' in Lusaka, Windhoek, and Maputo as part of the FRACTAL project, as well as processes in South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, Botswana, and Zimbabwe.
• In industrialized countries, the initiative draws on Swedish projects: Mistra-SWECIA, which focused on the forestry sector, and HazardSupport, which aims to create risk-based decision support tools for natural hazards.
• To improve communication, the initiative seeks to develop a 'harmonized language' for climate issues and use infographics for 'big data', building on a Swedish Forest Agency project that engaged 17,200 forest owners to test how communication changes behaviors regarding climate risks.
• The initiative is establishing an interactive online community space hosted by weADAPT.org to share guidance, publications, and experiences among practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2016). SEI INITIATIVE. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-FS-2016-Climate-Services-Initiative.pdf

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. SEI INITIATIVE. 2016. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-FS-2016-Climate-Services-Initiative.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=SEI INITIATIVE |date=2016 |url=https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-FS-2016-Climate-Services-Initiative.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2016sei, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{SEI INITIATIVE}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2016}, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/SEI-FS-2016-Climate-Services-Initiative.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }