Scaling up actionable climate knowledge
To address climate-driven crises, we need actionable climate knowledge to inform decision-making and support problem solving. Although the science of actionable knowledge is rapidly evolving, less is known about how and why actionable climate knowledge scales up and with what outcomes. We advance three outcome-driven pathways to scale up actionable climate knowledge: 1) broadening participation by increasing the diversity and number of actors involved in actionable climate knowledge coproduction; 2) diffusing actionable climate knowledge uptake among actors not originally involved in its coproduction, and 3) aggregating impact by coproducing actionable climate knowledge with influential actors, such as practitioners and policy-makers, whose decisions affect many others. These pathways can intersect, complement, interact, and tradeoff with each other. Understanding how these pathways work, evolve, and change is critical if we want to better inform the production and scaling of climate actionable knowledge to solve climate problems.
Authors
- Derek Van Berkel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1001-783X)
- Alex Basaraba (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9755-5963)
- Natalie Herbert (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3172-950X)
- Lisa Maillard
- Tinsley R. Harrison
- Kripa Jagannathan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4584-8358)
- Devin Gill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0136-4132)
- Simone J. Domingue (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0385-3941)
- Gabrielle Wong‐Parodi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5207-7489)
- Jenna Jorns (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0384-3727)
- Scott E. Kalafatis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5123-7935)
- Erica Akemi Goto (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1361-7213)
- Maria Carmen Lemos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6686-730X)
Institutions
- Tulane University (US)
- Pew Charitable Trusts (US)
- University of Arizona (US)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Bat Conservation International (US)
- Tula University (RU)
- Palo Alto Institute (US)
- Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center (US)
- NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Northwest Fisheries Science Center (US)
- NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2025-11-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2515771122
- Primary Topic
- Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- Gulf Research Program