Reflection on the Risks of Climate Change
When a team comes across an issue, they believe is a valuable problem or opportunity to explore further, the smart thing to do is to step back and ask foundational questions. The purpose of doing this is to have a starting frame and context for the problem. This frame must not be static because the perspectives the team is entering the problem with are not validated. The team must also ensure that the frame is objective and free from the biases and errors brought in by our existing knowledge.
In our case the first step as a team was to ask what is the problem that we are interested in relation to reducing climate change risks for vulnerable communities in Portugal. Through a brainstorming session it was agreed to focus on vulnerable communities in coastal areas. The hypothesis here is that the coastline and ocean are significantly important to the general population of Portugal and working towards a solution in this space would be valuable to the greatest number of people and hopefully have the social gravitas to matter which could sustain the eventual solution.
We began the research based on the double diamond innovation framework. We initially began with secondary research to understand the breadth of the problem. This being in line with the discovery phase. The research included looking at academic research papers and watching expert documentaries on the subject matter. The research revealed that the climate change risks in respect of coastal areas centres around rising water levels, erosion of the coastline, increased acidity, changing fishing patterns and ocean pollution. The problem cuts across social economic boundaries, different regions and different economic interests. This compounds the complexity of defining the problem because the issues bleed into one another and the eventual solution is likely to have to reach across these various boundaries.
As we gather information through research the team is working on organising the information to narrow down where a possible solution could be implemented. The purpose of this is to carry out the expansion and contraction legs of the double diamond.
The team is interested in implementing other research methods such as experiments where post cards are used to show participants pictures of the historic changes on the coastline and projected future changes on the coastline for 2050 and 2100 to better measure how people understand the problem, how important they believe the problem is and where the problem is on their priority list. However, with time and cost constraints this experiment remains on the to do list. This for the team highlights another aspect of research, which is you must structure the research keeping in mind the time and resources at your disposal.
