Valuing climate services: experiences from the CLARA project

This presentation aims to discuss some issues regarding the role of the economic evaluation of climate services in the context of the Horizon 2020 CLARA project.

CLARA provides 14 innovative services based on a co-development approach involving service producers and specific final users. In this context, the first issue is the role of the evaluation in the co-development framework. Our understanding suggests that it cannot be one of the last steps in the process, but a preliminary evaluation should be presented in the co-design of the service. For this reason, we advise the use of the “maximum likely value” as a signal for both developers and users. It derives from a comparison between the values of two alternative knowledge sources (i.e. one other than the climate service and the other as a 100% skill climate service). The “maximum likely value” provides a benchmark against which to compare the final product. It gives insights to the producer how to improve the service, while the final user has a direct and understandable measure of likely benefits from climate service adoption. This directly supports a higher engagement of the final user, whose participation is essential in developing the service as well as in gathering information for the evaluation.

Moreover, the final user’s participation has a strong impact in assessing how the services enter the decision- making process that is sometimes an obscure issue in the internal dynamic of the organizations. Recognizing a benefit stimulate the discussion on how the tool may be used internally. This sometimes leads to changes in the service design to meet better the users’ requirements. Another critical issue is the final user’s ability to translate into actions the signals of the climate services as well as to predict and quantify costs and benefits of actions based on climate services forecasts.

All these issues are discussed presenting examples from the CLARA project, especially from a set of services related to renewable energy production and water management.