Global Climate Change Collaborative (G3C)

Mission Statement

The G3C Challenge

In the coming decades humanity and the global environment will face great challenges associated with unprecedented rates of climatic change. While the general trends and mechanisms are well understood, the precise implications for particular locations and the impacts on the biophysical and social systems are not. In the face of existing threats conventional institutional structures of governance are often not well adapted to respond to the uncertainties and complexities of a changing world. Resilient responses to climate change will depend not only on use of the best available information, but also on widespread support among, and engagement with, affected people. The challenge, for building the institutional capacity to ameliorate rapid and unpredictable change, is to understand collective decision-making to foster more effective patterns of governance and collective science, policy, and management.

The G3C Purpose

We will develop processes of science-based decision-making to build bridges between science, policy, and management to foster collaboration between individuals and institutions worldwide to produce rapid, resilient, and sustainable responses to climate change.

The G3C Approach

We investigate the design and performance of collaborative decision-making processes worldwide through action research projects with an emphasis on coastal and marine systems and water-related issues through addressing decision-making processes.  We hypothesize that collaborative adaptive science and governance offer the best prospects for producing resilient and sustainable responses to climate change. Therefore, we will develop and test methodologies for integrating biophysical and social sciences through project-based approaches.

• We study biophysical and social systems integrating the concerns and aspirations of stakeholders to move closer to a productive harmony between humanity and the environment.

• We focus on the creation, disposition, and exchange of values among people, whether as outcomes of policy, in decision-making, or in the constitution of collaborative efforts.

• We undertake culturally and ecologically diverse projects to develop and test the robustness of the theory and practice of collaborative decision- making.

• We create an arena were researchers and practitioners can exchange information to accelerate the diffusion and adoption of lessons learned.

• We engage local communities and researchers in the design and implementation of the process to assure effective transfer of local and science-based knowledge and a shared sense of ownership in the process.

• We emphasize the importance of relationship building in our scholarly inquiry as a necessary facet of learning, and as a means of fostering implementation of lessons. 

• We recognize that as action researchers one of our most important tasks is to transfer new understandings resulting from this research to scholars and decision makers to build a better synthesis of science and policy.