Strategy – JPI Climate

JPI Climate Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda

The JPI Climate Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) sets out three overarching challenges and one strategic mechanism that together are intended to develop and support excellent, innovative, relevant and informative climate research. The framing – especially the emphasis on connectivity and synergy – reflects the priorities and approaches of researchers, funders and practitioners in the countries participating in JPI Climate. The three overarching challenges are:

Understanding the processes and consequences of climate change
Improving knowledge on climate-related decision-making processes and measures
Researching sustainable societal transformation in the context of climate change

and the Strategic Mechanism is:

Connecting people, problems and solutions in a systemic approach

The first challenge deals with building the knowledge base on the climate system and climate impacts that is relevant for strategic planning. While the second challenge deals with the short-term/incremental decisions and understanding decision making processes themselves, the third challenge deals with decisions in a wider and more holistic perspective, in terms of the long-term transition and development of society. Together these three challenges deal with linking research and innovation to decisions at different scales. The strategic mechanism frames the task of JPI Climate of enhancing connections as a research topic in itself. JPI Climate aims to work in an international context for all of these three challenges and strategic mechanism that comprise its SRIA, with a user-oriented approach and with a focus on integrating research and decision making. The slight overlap between the challenges is intentional. Solutions to the complex problems associated with addressing climate variability and change will not be successfully developed within a siloed approach to research and innovation. These challenges are described in general terms, in order to account for future policy developments and frameworks as well as technical and scientific advances. The specific priorities and activities for a given period within JPI Climate will be reflected in the Implementation Strategy and Plan.

Read the full strategy of JPI Climate here.

Governance Principles

The governance principles derive from both the thematic contents, addressed by JPI Climate as well, as the strategic objectives of the JPI Climate concept itself. They provide support to assure coherence between ‘what’ we are working on and ‘how’ we are working. In addition, they represent procedural objectives that broaden the scope for advancements and provide motivation for constant improvement. Hitherto discussions have mostly addressed the rationales of these principles. In order to put them into effect in our future work, we – however – need to reflect on what these principles mean to us and, more specifically, our operations. For these reasons the principles and related objectives have been formulated ambitiously. The following principles have been addressed in the context of different discussions on the JPI Climate:

Sustainability principle

Governance - Sustainability principle

Objective: To take into account the challenges of climate change in the work of JPI Climate, based on active reflection of operations (e.g. “green meetings”) and to formulate the endeavour of constant improvement of the operations’ climate performance.

Rationale: In consideration of the grand societal challenge of climate change being central to research efforts that are initiated by JPI Climate, its members seek to contribute to mitigating the carbon footprint of its work and activities. In doing so, the JPI Climate governance is committed to increasing the credibility of climate impact research and function as a role model for other groups of society in terms of responsible, climate-friendly science and research.

Stakeholder orientation principle

Governance - Stakeholder orientation principle

Objective: To integrate the knowledge, values and objectives of societal decision-makers in the implementation and operation of the JPI Climate through the active participation of stakeholder group representatives in accordance with the JPI Climate mission.

Rationale: The JPI ‘Connecting Climate Knowledge for Europe’ aims to improve the utilisation of scientific knowledge on climate change in societal decision-making processes. Therefore the involvement of stakeholders from civil society, politics and the business sector is crucial when it comes to identifying themes and setting up research agendas.

Adaptability principle

Governance - Adaptability principle

Objective: To enable the JPI Climate’s thematic framework to respond to novel scientific insights and research requirements, current states of societal transformations and potential demands due to sudden social-ecological crises.

Rationale: JPI Climate is setting up a research framework on a strategic, long-term basis. Alongside its overall objective to facilitate societal transformation by improving the utilisation of scientific knowledge on climate change in societal decision-making processes, in the course of its operations it is very likely that the JPI’s mission will be subject to shifting and novel research needs and priorities. The JPI’s governance structure therefore needs to allow for the adaptation of the JPI’s operations to these changing framework conditions where necessary.

Transparency principle

Governance - Transparency principle

Objective: To base the collaborative efforts encompassed within JPI Climate development and implementation on the notions of openness, mutual learning, mutual dependency and joint creativity; and to foster the free flow and sharing of information, experiences and opinions.

Rationale: Access to knowledge and information is a prerequisite for individual and mutual learning processes. Given the grand and complex societal challenge that is addressed by JPI Climate, fostering both is a prerequisite for successful completion of the JPI Climate mission. Allowing access to knowledge and information within JPI Climate – a multi-level, multi-stakeholder institution – for both internal work and external information is not a trivial task and therefore requires active and continuous deliberation and promotion.

Cost efficiency principle

Governance - Cost Efficiency principle

Objective: To limit superfluous duplication of scientific/technical outputs, research and funding activities.

Rationale: Joint Programming is based on coordinating European research efforts to increase its capacities to tackle grand societal challenges, such as climate change. An understood objective of the JPI Climate operations is therefore to use its existing resources in a cost-efficient manner. In order to meet this objective, JPI Climate needs to assess the availability of present and potential joint initiatives and joint calls at European and international level pertaining to the same or related topics to build up inter-linkages and streamline activities with potential partner initiatives.

Policy Briefs, Guidelines and Conference Video Reports

Climate change research and research programming, especially in terms of publicly funded research programs, aim to support society in tackling the grand societal challenge of climate change and to underpin the necessity of reducing the carbon footprint of its activities. Ironically, the carbon emissions of universities and research organizations – and therefore also research programming – are high and in some regions on the rise. This is due to the considerably carbon-intensive working style that researchers and their institutions have developed, fuelled by growing expectations of international cooperation, low air fares and an increasing use of resource-intensive infrastructures. However, crucial to scientific communication is also credibility, which can be severely undermined by such activities, which are often inconsistent with the message that climate scientists in particular advocate.

By adopting the Sustainability Principle, the Governing Board of JPI Climate has committed itself to explore ways to reduce the carbon footprint of the research system, thereby providing positive role models of organizing international collaboration and knowledge exchange in a creative, smart and climate-friendly way. First steps have been taken by making ‘climate-friendly climate research’ an evaluation criterion for our research calls.

Charts from the Report Policy Brief: 'Feasability Assessment'

Charts from the Report Policy Brief: ‘Feasability Assessment’

The JPI Climate policy briefs review and systematize existing approaches to reduce the carbon footprint of research and research programming.

In seeking to identify ways to reduce the carbon footprint of research, it is hoped that additional positive side‐effects can also be achieved, e.g. in terms of better use of time and financial resources, the broader impact of resource use and work‐life balance.

Climate-friendly Climate Research Conference on November 2013: Session videos.

Policy Briefs

In line with the so-called “transparency principle” (see governance principles), JPI Climate commits itself with the growing demand on more openness in many aspects of public life (politics, economics, culture, and also science and research). The Guidelines on Open Knowledge contribute to increase climate (change) research activities’ societal impact and credibility by making them more transparent. They establish a set of recommendations to boost a more effective climate knowledge management policy in terms of openness (and particularly accessibility). These recommendations are thought for the JPI community in its widest sense.

The extended version of the document consists of 6 chapters and 1 appendix. Chapter 1 presents the rationale of the guidelines and their aim, while in chapter 2 the connections between Open Knowledge and climate research are outlined. Chapters 3 and 4 provide information related to publishing and sharing knowledge output. First, Open Access, Open Data and specific intellectual property rights management tools are presented and their relevance for JPI Climate is highlighted. Second, selected examples of institutions, best practices and lessons learnt are presented. In chapter 5 a debate on comprehensive policies focusing on the whole research cycle (i.e. beyond accessibility issues) is raised. Chapter 6 underpins the initial Guidelines by providing clarification. Finally, the appendix contains a selection of links to key documents on Open Knowledge and Open Access, focusing on those relevant regulations for the JPI Climate community (being either consolidated or potentially useful tools).

On 22-23 October 2015 a symposium organised by JPI Climate entitled Designing Comprehensive Open Knowledge Policies to Face Climate Change took place in Vienna (Austria). The final report of the symposium presents a set of recommendations for JPI Climate towards the implementation of the JPI Climate Guidelines on Open Knowledge.

Documents

The open access book “Climate Adaptation Modelling”
Planning with climate change: Combining climate mitigation and adaptation decisions (Rolf von Kuhlmann, AXIS Research Programme Coordinator , 15 April 2021)
Final report JPI Climate symposium – Designing Comprehensive Open Knowledge Policies to Face Climate Change (27 January 2016)
JPI Climate Guidelines on Open Knowledge (24 June 2015)
JPI Climate Guidelines on Open Knowledge – extended version (24 June 2015)