{"id":4351,"date":"2026-04-29T17:00:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/?p=4351"},"modified":"2026-05-24T20:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T20:08:36","slug":"beyond-the-deficit-co-producing-climate-futures-through-civic-science-arts-and-agricultural-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/?p=4351","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Deficit: Co-Producing Climate Futures with Publics (A University Engagement Architecture)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Universities increasingly seek public engagement on climate change, yet many initiatives rely on the flawed \u201cinformation deficit\u201d model, assuming one-way knowledge transfer (and\/or education) can prompt behaviour change or action (see critique by Sturgis & Allum, 2004). Cook & Overpeck (2019) further show that educative approaches can even produce boomerang effects, increasing resistance especially among individuals who perceive science communication as identity threatening. For climate futures research, this matters because implementation depends not only on technical evidence, but also on trust, values, social norms, institutional credibility, perceived efficacy, and legitimacy.<\/p>\n

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Chilvers (2024) emphasizes that participatory formats must be responsive to social learning, power, and the dynamics of publics\u2019 concerns. Engagement should be treated as a process in which publics and institutions co-define problems and co-produce legitimacy (Chilvers, 2024). This aligns with broader engagement research that moves away from \u201cinformation delivery\u201d toward structured interaction and iterative learning. This yields explicit governance questions for universities:<\/p>\n

– Which publics are engaged and how?<\/p>\n

– What counts as knowledge?<\/p>\n

– How does engagement affect institutional decisions and model assumptions?<\/p>\n

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This provides the rationale for participatory and civic science approaches: rather than assuming publics need correction, these approaches assume publics bring socially grounded expertise, while scientific work benefits from dialogue and negotiation.<\/p>\n

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Civic science becomes a pathway to tackle \u201cwicked problems\u201d where data alone is insufficient so participatory inquiry, collective action, and problem framing connected to societal needs must connect to decision-making contexts and responsibilities (Dillon et al.,<\/em> 2016). In this view, universities are not only sites of expertise; they can serve as platforms that convene actors, design participation around governance implications, and translate findings into action.<\/p>\n

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State-of-the-art also shows engagement is not inherently transformative. The crucial question is whether university practices genuinely alter knowledge authority and influence broader societal processes or whether they remain primarily outreach and visibility.<\/p>\n

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To explain how participation can work in practice, concept of boundary objects and translation (Star & Griesemer, 1989) can be used where collaboration between amateurs and professionals succeeds when shared objects allow coordination without requiring full consensus. In climate civic science, boundary objects may include standardized observation protocols, datasets, mapping tools, or visualization formats that make lay observations compatible with scientific analysis. This helps universities understand design choices: participation often succeeds not by eliminating difference, but by constructing interfaces that allow different forms of expertise to interact while maintaining each group\u2019s meaningful categories.<\/p>\n

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Building on that perspective, I asks how universities can move beyond one-way climate communication and instead become infrastructures for epistemic partnership, in which publics shape the research, governance, and implementation of mitigation and adaptation pathways.<\/p>\n

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I propose an adaptation governance strategy: a replicable engagement architecture that replaces passive communication with epistemic partnership (i.e., structured, bidirectional feedback between academia and society).<\/p>\n

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In this model:<\/p>\n

– public input reshapes research priorities,<\/p>\n

– artistic collaboration generates new knowledge forms,<\/p>\n

– civic engagement with farmers, NGOs, and communities co-produces climate futures pathways.<\/p>\n

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Four critical gaps remain in many university engagement efforts:<\/p>\n