Sustainability and Climate Services: Critique, Integration, and Reimagination

Dear Colleagues,

As an ideal, sustainable development—or sustainability—integrates economic growth, social equity, and enduring environmental quality. Studies of sustainability are multi-disciplinary, cross-sectoral, and reflexive. More broadly, sustainable development has been characterized as a societal process of learning, adaptation, and creation. Climate change represents a clear and pressing challenge to efforts to forge a sustainable future. The effort to develop and apply climate services is—or at least ought to be—part and parcel of the larger enterprise of sustainable development.

For a long time, the entry point for most communities and decision makers concerned about climate change was to ask “what does the science tell us is going to happen?” Consequently, even though some effort was made to bring social and policy sciences to bear in the climate services enterprise from its inception, the demand for technical advances such as downscaled climate model projections and climate impacts science drove much of the climate services agenda in its first decade and a half. By the 2000s, “users” of climate information were becoming more sophisticated, starting with a handful of utilities and municipalities before expanding to other sectors. While this demand-driven innovation is being recognized in peer-reviewed discussions of climate services, most authors continue to presume and even privilege a top-down, science-first flow of knowledge production and innovation.

We are seeking your contribution for a Special Issue of the journal Sustainability entitled “Sustainability and Climate Services: Critique, Integration, and Reimagination”. While welcoming submissions from climate services scholars, we seek critical input from scholars outside the climate services community, as well as professionals and non-scholars engaged in the climate services enterprise. We especially welcome pieces co-authored by information users and their technical/scientific partners. All contributions must reflect the voice, perspective, and existential situation of climate service users. Further, contributions must frame discussion of climate services in terms of the broader issue of sustainability. Submissions may be normative, descriptive, or both.

As we envision it, the purpose of this Special Issue is to empower unconventional thinking in the hopes of accelerating the relevance of climate services at a time when many communities, tribes, and state and federal government agencies are pursuing programs of adaptation, resilience, and sustainability. This Special Issue will provide outside-the-box critiques to help provide the basis for a ‘next generation’ of weather- and climate-related information products and services.

Submissions might address questions, topics, or propositions such as the following:

Interpretive critiques linked to case research on the relationship between climate service provision and over-arching concepts such as sustainability and resilience. Are there cases where climate services support long-term resilience to climate change and weather extremes? Alternatively, are there cases where the provision of climate services may be supporting maladaptation to climate change?

• Methods, case research, and interpretive critiques focused on the evaluation of climate services, including life cycle, gap, or critical path analysis of service provision efforts that either have or have not succeeded.
• Case research, interpretive studies, and modeling efforts that illuminate factors that explain the market pull and uptake of climate services.
• Diversity, equity, and inclusiveness (DEI) are becoming increasingly important with respect to the development, availability, and delivery of government-sponsored services. Is DEI being meaningfully addressed within the enterprise of climate services?
• Case research, historical interpretations, and other efforts that illuminate the nexus between climate services and disaster response/management.
• Evaluation of the role of legal innovation and model policy development as a crucial aspect of climate services to move communities into the implementation phase of the policy process.
• Critical reviews of the proposition that there is a true black-top or grassroots demand for climate services, with a particular emphasis on case research that documents climate service ideas that bubbled up from lay practitioners to the specialist community.
• Critical analyses and deconstructive studies of the institutional milieu and networks through which climate services are produced and delivered. Which organizations and agencies provide climate services and how do their methods and objectives mesh? Are national regimes of climate service agencies sufficiently coordinated to be effective?
• Critical analyses and deconstructive studies that illuminate organizational factors that affect the uptake and use of climate services. Are there jurisdictional levels, structural models, or other factors that impact an organization’s inclination and ability to seek and use climate services?
• Critical reviews of climate services and their role in governance, with a particular focus on different phases of the policy process: formulation, program implementation, and enforcement.
• Critical reviews of co-production initiatives, action-oriented research, boundary work, and other efforts to integrate ways of knowing, especially pieces co-authored by users and their technical partners. Submittals might draw upon other areas in which knowledge co-production is being pursued, such as health care, community policing, and landscape management.
• Critical review of efforts to integrate climate services with folk ways or indigenous knowledge. Perhaps including critical and interpretive histories of past efforts to transform traditional activities through the application of cutting-edge science and technology (e.g., the Green Revolution).

Prospective authors are encouraged to submit a prospectus of no more than 1,000 words summarizing major themes, anticipated findings/observations, and a short description of how climate services relate to overarching questions of sustainability and resilience. The Guest Editors will quickly review the prospectus and provide feedback to the author in the form of comments and guidance. Please submit your prospectus by May 15, 2022, or contact the guest editors if this deadline has already passed.

Please contact us if you have questions or ideas that you would like to discuss. We look forward to your submittals.

Dr. Charles Herrick
Dr. Jason Vogel
Dr. Glen Anderson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• climate services
• vulnerability assessment
• adaptation
• resilience
• sustainability
• co-production