HSD: Anticipatory Learning for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience

适应气候变化的影响现在处于科学调查和政策谈判的前沿，但目前的辩论对理解影响适应和具有复原力的生计的决策过程没有多大帮助。 这一跨学科研究项目假设，周期性（循环）学习增强了人们的预期能力，这反映在更灵活和更有活力的地方和区域适应计划中。 研究人员提出了一种增强一致性的方法，强调以迭代的方式分析和学习过去、现在和未来的变化和不确定性。 通过明确侧重于学习过程和决策支持工具，该项目有望扭转将脆弱群体视为气候变化被动受害者的确定性概念，突出人们的技能、知识、战略对策、预期能力和适应规划机构。 研究将在加纳和坦桑尼亚的选定农村社区进行，使用学习科学，农村社会学，文化地理学和参与性行动研究的方法，以了解预期学习如何（帮助人们预测和适应变化的学习）以及如何加强这一点。预计该项目的贡献有三个方面：（1）关于预期学习如何在气候变化背景下发挥作用的理论;（2）对人们的个人和集体预期能力的初步测量;（3）对预期学习工具的试点干预。 该项目将解决决策理论中的新的重要问题，涉及允许一些社区比其他社区更好地适应变化的过程;社会配置，学习实践和气候风险下的决策之间的关系;知识创造和行动的动态。 该项目还将为研究人群提供直接利益，在美国和非洲提供培训机会，以及对气候变化对人类的紧迫影响具有高度潜在影响的发现。 通过在加纳和坦桑尼亚共同设计适应工具和干预措施，该研究将培养人们通过反复规划而不是通过震惊学习来影响其未来的能力。 该研究将以三种方式让美国学生参与：（1）通过直接参与该项目的实施而接受教育和培训的研究生和本科生;（2）注册参加气候变化适应课程和在非洲留学的本科生;以及（3）跨学科研究生研讨会，与非洲同事一起设计预期学习工具。 美国调查人员将与非洲伙伴机构（坦桑尼亚达累斯萨拉姆大学、加纳大学和坦桑尼亚平原发展组织（APDO））的研究人员和从业人员以及灾害风险和发展组织（CARE International和红十字会/红新月会）密切合作。 2008财政年度NSF范围内的人类和社会动力学（HSD）竞赛产生的一个奖项支持了这个项目。 NSF的所有董事会和办公室都参与了HSD竞赛和HSD奖项组合的协调管理。

Adaptation to the impacts of climatic change is now at the forefront of scientific inquiry and policy negotiations, but the current debate has contributed little to the understanding of the decision-making processes that shape adaptation and resilient livelihoods. This interdisciplinary research project hypothesizes that cyclical (loop) learning enhances people's anticipatory capacity, which is reflected in more flexible and dynamic local and regional adaptation plans. The investigators propose a resilience-enhancing approach that emphasizes an iterative way of analyzing and learning about changes and uncertainties in the past, present, and future. By focusing explicitly on learning processes and decision-support tools, this project is expected to reverse the deterministic notion of presumably vulnerable groups as passive victims of climate change by highlighting people's skills, knowledge, strategic responses, anticipatory capacity, and agency for adaptation planning. Research will be conducted in selected rural communities in Ghana and Tanzania using methods from the learning sciences, rural sociology, cultural geography, and participatory action research to understand how anticipatory learning (learning that helps people anticipate and adapt to change) occurs on the ground and how it can be enhanced.The contributions of this project are expected to be threefold: (1) a theory regarding how anticipatory learning works in the context of climate change; (2) initial measures of people's individual and collective capacity for anticipation; and (3) pilot interventions for anticipatory learning tools. The project will address new and important questions in decision theory with respect to processes that permit some communities to better adapt to change than others; relationships among social configuration, learning practices, and decision making under climatic risk; and dynamics in knowledge creation and action. The project also will provide immediate benefits for the study populations, training opportunities in the U.S. and in Africa, and findings that have high potential impact on the pressing human impacts of climate change. Through co-design of adaptation tools and interventions in Ghana and Tanzania, the research will foster people's capacity to influence their future through iterative planning rather than learning by shock. The study will involve students in the U.S. in three ways: (1) graduate and undergraduate students educated and trained through their direct participation in the conduct of this project; (2) undergraduate students enrolled in a course on climate change adaptation and study abroad in Africa; and (3) an interdisciplinary graduate seminar to design anticipatory learning tools with African colleagues. The U.S. investigators will work closely with researchers and practitioners at African partner institutions (the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, the University of Ghana, and the Afram Plains Development Organization (APDO) as well as with disaster risk and development organizations (CARE International and the Red Cross/Red Crescent). An award resulting from the FY 2008 NSF-wide competition on Human and Social Dynamics (HSD) supports this project. All NSF directorates and offices are involved in the coordinated management of the HSD competition and the portfolio of HSD awards.